Despite the shockwaves caused by relentlessly rising gold and silver prices and the impact of US tariffs, the jewelry industry is thriving. Brands remain bullish on the American market and continue to expand their footprint. They also continue to invest — not only in their icons and high jewelry collections, but also in experiences aimed at both clients and the wider public. Museum exhibitions, cultural events, and immersive brand moments have become central to strategies designed to embed jewelry even deeper into popular culture.
According to Federica Levato, senior partner at Bain Co, the category is benefiting from a more disciplined approach to pricing, which is helping it win customers from other luxury segments. Brands that can generate strong icons, compelling high jewelry, and meaningful experiences are particularly well-positioned. More fundamentally, Levato points to a structural shift reshaping the category over the next five years: growing consumer interest in jewelry as an investment asset — territory long dominated by watches, but now extending to include any type of hard luxury.
That positioning also leaves jewelry well-equipped to navigate what Bernstein analyst Luca Solca describes as a K-shaped economy, marked by widening wealth and income inequality. At the lower end of the market, entry-price jewelry offers a more compelling proposition than handbags, with pieces below the €10,000 threshold. At the top end, high jewelry satisfies the desire for rarity and uniqueness among high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients. In this increasingly polarized landscape, Solca argues, the winners will be brands sitting at the apex of consumer desirability — particularly those least exposed to bridal and most capable of combining cultural relevance with enduring value. With the global number of millionaires on the rise (up 4.6% year-on-year in 2024, according to UBS), the future of jewelry looks sparkly.
Navigating rising prices of gold and silver
The rising gold price has always been a point of interest, yet the scale and speed of its recent ascent are unprecedented. On January 3, 2020, gold traded at $1,548.75 per ounce. As of February 9, 2026, it stands at $5,019.07 — a rise of roughly 224% in just over six years.
What is even more striking is how sharply that increase has accelerated over the past year. On January 1, 2024, gold was priced at just $2,028.00 an ounce. Since then, it has surged by approximately 147%, meaning that nearly half of the total six-year increase has occurred in the most recent phase of the market cycle.
“Gold’s recent strength reflects a combination of factors, from geopolitical uncertainty to investment-led demand and central-bank buying,” explains Charlie Betts, founder of the industry-standard Single Mine Origin. According to data from the World Gold Council, central banks have purchased more than a thousand tons of gold annually since 2022 — the highest level on record — led by China, Türkiye, and India, as countries seek to reduce reliance on the US dollar and insulate reserves from geopolitical risk.
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For jewelry brands, this rapid appreciation has impacted not only sourcing and pricing, but also the psychology of buying. “Clients are comforted by purchasing a product whose value increases over time,” says Bvlgari chair Jean-Christophe Babin. “It has reinforced the investment dimension of jewelry.”
However, Babin notes that while gold has drawn much of the attention, the pressure has been even more pronounced in colored gemstones: over the past 15 years, he says, the average price per carat has quadrupled, while diamonds have remained comparatively stable.
Independent brands feel this shift most acutely. Brazilian jeweler Ara Vartanian recalls that, for the first time in his 25-year career, he melted gold from existing stock rather than re-sort at sharply higher prices. But he notes a paradoxical upside: both sellers and buyers take comfort in dealing with products whose underlying value is rising over time. “The opposite scenario would be far more difficult to manage,” he says. “Clients understand price increases in jewelry when gold prices are rising.” Even so, Vartanian acknowledges that launching a jewelry business under today’s conditions would be materially more challenging.
For eponymous founder Annoushka Ducas, gold inflation — which she says began to have a material impact around 2020 — has forced a broader rethink across pricing, sourcing, and design. The challenge, she argues, is to “preserve a sense of generosity while engineering pieces that use gold more intelligently”. Alongside this, Ducas has diversified her offer, introducing the Knuckle collection, crafted in silver at a more accessible price point. Other designers, including Giorgio B began experimenting with titanium in some sculptural pieces presented at PAD art fair in London last year.
In other cases, constraints have acted as catalysts for creativity and commercial expansion.
Roxanne First responded with Bubblegum by RF, a fully modular and customizable collection of pendants with prices ranging from £45 to £12,000. For Sheherazade Goldsmith, founder of Loquet, heightened awareness of gold inflation presented an opportunity to move decisively upmarket, adding a premium 18-karat gold line to her existing 9-karat and 14-karat collections, and addressing a more investment-minded clientele.
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While jewelers who primarily deal with 18-karat gold have often introduced more affordable silver pieces to offset price increases, silver has also been hit with spiking materials costs and volatility. Priced at around $18 per ounce on January 3, 2020, silver rose to $23.9 by January 2, 2024, before climbing further to $29.4 in January 2025. Since then, price action has become increasingly extreme: by February 9, 2026, silver was trading at around $83 per ounce, after a series of sharp swings. The surge has begun to filter through to design and materials choices, prompting brands such as Soru to explain to customers via social media that some pieces will now be produced in brass rather than gold-plated silver.
US tariffs: The poisoned fruit of jewelry paradise
Home to around 40% of the world’s millionaires, the US has long been an El Dorado for jewelers — a status that has only strengthened in recent years as brands accelerate investment in the market. In 2024, Boucheron began a series of flagship openings, notably in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. Jessica McCormack opened her first US flagship in May last year, followed by Messika in October. Meanwhile, Pomellato is currently in expansion mode, with store openings across the country. Bvlgari, which operates 22 boutiques in the US, is simultaneously upgrading existing locations while adding new ones, including an upcoming outpost in San Diego.
But just as momentum is building, the market has presented a fresh challenge. In 2025, the US introduced import tariffs of 10% on goods from the UK, 15% on those from the European Union, and up to 50% on imports from Brazil and China, two countries that are not only major jewelry producers, but also for which the US remains a key destination market. This includes not only their local labels, but also pieces they produce on behalf of Western brands. India, another key market, has recently renegotiated its tariff to 18%, down from 25%, plus an additional 25% linked to the purchase of Russian oil.
“The US tariffs have hit me twice,” says Brazilian designer Ara Vartanian, alluding to the US tariffs imposed on his Brazil-made jewels and the counter tariffs on his Canadian clients buying in Miami. The 50% import tariff on jewelry made in São Paulo forced Vartanian to rethink how he restocks his Miami boutique — including the possibility of producing some pieces in the US — while recalibrating his reliance on trunk shows, a traditionally effective sales channel for independent jewelers. The measures have gone so far as to prompt Vartanian to cancel his participation in the Las Vegas jewelry shows scheduled for late May and early June.
Compounding the pressure, Canada’s introduction of a 25% import tariff has discouraged Vartanian’s Canadian clients from traveling to Miami to shop. “With the US now my second largest market after Brazil, the tariffs have been a real blow,” he adds.
Vogue Business breaks down tariffs by country and what the rates mean for fashion.
Unlike the 50% tariffs faced by Ara Vartanian, European brands are dealing with a comparatively lower 15% duty. Large groups such as Bvlgari and Boucheron, owned by LVMH and Kering, respectively, say the impact is manageable. “We would have preferred not to have it, of course,” says Babin. “But at least it is a factor that — unlike gold prices — is stable and easier to plan for. It means we need to make our value proposition more appealing and more meaningful.”
Boucheron CEO Hélène Poulit-Duquesne echoes this view. “Our ambition is to further strengthen our presence in this market, and to introduce the world of the maison more widely,” she says, suggesting the brand is prepared to do whatever it takes to succeed in the US.
Independent maisons, however, face a more complex equation, constrained by the absence of the operational and financial synergies enjoyed by large groups. “The US remains clearly and openly our number one priority,” says Jean-Baptiste Sassine, CEO of Messika. “Eight years ago, the American market didn’t exist for us. Today, it represents around 15% of our business, and we aim to double that share within the next five years.”
The US, Sassine adds, is where the brand is investing most heavily — across communication, store openings, events, and inventory. To protect a fast-growing business built around high-ticket pieces, Messika has chosen to absorb “a significant portion of these additional costs” even as rising gold prices weigh on margins. The brand plans to open six new boutiques in the US in 2026.
Even for emerging brands, the States remain difficult to overlook, and it is worth every effort. “It’s a market that’s hard to ignore if you want to build a globally relevant brand,” says Christie Wollenberg, founder of Otiumberg, a London-based jewelry label (US import tariffs for the UK stand at 10%).
While tariffs and rising gold costs have driven up prices, Wollenberg notes that American consumers generally have greater spending power than other markets, as well as a higher perceived value of European brands.
It’s always high jewelry season
Besides the business of icons, what is driving jewelry growth is the development of high jewelry — unique pieces priced from $100,000.
Babin says that Bvlgari pioneered the move away from a single, concentrated high jewelry season, toward a year-round calendar of events. The brand now stages five to six major high jewelry events annually, rotating across key markets including Europe, the US, China, Japan, and the Middle East. These global showcases are complemented by a program of regional activations. In markets such as China, Bvlgari may visit five or six cities within a single month, hosting day-long presentations and evening dinners for around 60 clients per city. Other brands like Cartier, Boucheron and Chaumet operate in a very similar way, as do fashion brands that have expanded into jewelry, like Louis Vuitton and Dior. Just last week, both Boucheron and Cartier were staging high jewelry presentations in the United Arab Emirates.
Icons such as Cartier’s Trinity, Van Cleef Arpels’s Alhambra or Bulgari’s Serpenti are the holy grail for jewellery brands as they allow them to reach a wider and younger clientele. But what’s the recipe?
This approach is a response to growing competition for clients’ attention. As more houses — most recently Gucci and Armani — enter the high jewelry space, calendars are becoming increasingly congested.
“The client overlap between maisons can reach 60% to 80%. Clients cannot attend everything, and they certainly won’t buy from everyone — so we have to be strategic,” says Babin. This logic underpins Bvlgari’s decision to start the season earlier than usual this year, with its first high jewelry event taking place in Milan in March. The collection, Babin acknowledges, will not be presented in full at that stage; some pieces will still be in production, but what matters is performance.
“I prefer having a smaller selection with a higher conversion rate, versus a larger offer with an average conversion,” he says, adding that the creations will be progressively featured at Bvlgari’s other high jewelry events throughout the year.
Other brands like Van Cleef Arpels and Chopard have followed a similar approach. Chopard presents its collection in May, during the Cannes Film Festival, while in 2024, Van Cleef Arpels presented its collection in September, before deliberately skipping the 2025 season.
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The experience
Behind the multiplication of high jewelry events, Bain’s Levato sees a reflection of deeper structural shifts in the luxury sector, where experience has increasingly become the product. “For top clients, in particular, ownership alone is no longer the primary driver of value,” she explains. “Brands are now prioritizing the creation of priceless, once-in-a-lifetime moments that deepen emotional connection well beyond a single transaction.” At the same time, Levato adds, the bar of client expectations continues to rise, as they drive up the cost-to-serve.
This approach has led brands to assign top clients dedicated sales assistants who act as year-round concierges. Beyond being the clients’ point of contact during brand events, sales assistants act as de facto personal butlers, who, leveraging a brand’s network of contacts, provide privileged access to celebrities or cultural events, and arrange private visits to historic locations not normally open to the public, while reminding them to reward personal or professional milestones.
For Bvlgari’s Babin — and on behalf of many other jewelers — this approach represents a return to the profession’s origins. Jewelers, he notes, were once chosen as a family’s trusted partner, privy to major life moments and responsible for supplying pieces for every significant occasion. Over time, this model expanded to encompass a broader VIP clientele, which extended even further during the pandemic as brands sought to maintain relationships while stores were closed. This soon became commonplace across all luxury categories, with more stores making the move to Whatsapp chats and video calls as a means to reach the highest level of customer service.
Experiential strategies have since become commonplace, from in-boutique cafés to private events. Bvlgari, however, has pushed the concept further by pioneering branded hotels, which Babin describes as both a source of prospective clients and a competitive advantage. “A coffee shop is something anyone can copy,” he says, noting that in-store conversion rates often hover around 25%, meaning the majority of visitors leave without purchasing. “If you spend €5,000 for one night in a hotel, however, you can probably spend €50,000 for a watch, or €500,000 for a necklace.”
The archive: Why the past is the new future
Over the past decade, major jewelry houses have quietly but steadily invested in rebuilding their archives — often by repurchasing their own creations from the secondary market. What was once a curatorial exercise has become a strategic one. Archives are no longer passive repositories of the past; they are now active assets, deployed across marketing, creativity, and cultural relevance.
The first and most visible objective has been the staging of archival exhibitions. Once rare, museum-grade brand shows have become a central part of the luxury marketing playbook. Today, some jewelry maisons organize up to two major exhibitions a year, often simultaneously across continents. Van Cleef Arpels, for example, staged parallel exhibitions in the US and Tokyo in 2025, while Cartier followed its blockbuster exhibition at London’s Victoria Albert Museum with a major show in Rome. These exhibitions do more than celebrate heritage: they position jewelry within a broader cultural and artistic discourse, reinforcing legitimacy, prestige, and emotional value.
Archives have also become a powerful engine for creativity. This year, both the high jewelry collections of Boucheron and Chaumet were explicitly inspired by historic designs, motifs drawn from their own past. But the influence of archives is not limited to rarefied, one-off creations. Mid-tier collections increasingly draw on historic codes to anchor new designs in recognizable lineage. Boucheron’s Flèche collection, launched last year, reinterpreted its archival arrow motif, while Bvlgari introduced Vimini this year, based on a past design. Cartier has long demonstrated the commercial power of heritage-led design through collections such as Grain de Café.
Beyond positioning jewelry alongside fine art — placing it within the same institutional spaces as painting or sculpture — archival strategy has a clear commercial logic. As Bernstein’s Solca argues, investing in archives is an effective way to monetize the past by feeding present-day creativity.
A third, highly visible use of archival jewelry is on the red carpet. Most recently, Margot Robbie appeared at the premiere of Wuthering Heights wearing archival garnet earrings by Boucheron. This fascination with the old is not entirely new, but it has accelerated remarkably. When Lady Gaga wore Tiffany’s 128-carat yellow diamond to the 2019 Oscars — previously worn only by Audrey Hepburn during the promotion of Breakfast at Tiffany’s — it felt like the starting gun for the next era of archival glamour.
Since then, the practice has become increasingly codified. At the 2025 Baftas last February, Cynthia Erivo wore vintage emeralds from Tiffany, echoing the green palette of her character in Wicked. At the Oscars the following month, Mikey Madison accepted her statuette wearing an early 20th-century diamond Tiffany necklace, while Felicity Jones paired a silver gown with a Boucheron parure that included an Art Deco bracelet from 1927.
Achim Berg, founder of independent consultancy Fashionsights, argues that celebrities wearing archival pieces signal that jewelry from heritage players is not only timeless, but enduringly relevant. When creations from decades past continue to be worn and celebrated, Berg says, they reinforce the idea of jewelry as a long-term store of creative and cultural value.
Given the enthusiastic response to retrospective exhibitions (Cartier at the V&A was booked out for months) and the buzz archival jewels generate on social media, it looks like jewelers’ future is both in their past and in relationships and experiences that feel less transactional, according to Levato.
