Swiss Movements
Geneva is a small town with a huge population of power players in search of fine jewelry
Residents of Geneva are fond of calling their city a village — a global village. A concentration of international bankers, foreign diplomats and high-end watchmakers — the latter a Geneva fixture since the 17th century, when Huguenots fleeing persecution in France brought their artistic savoir-faire to bear on the local trade — means that a haute selection of jewelry is de riguer.
Photo provided courtesy of Geneva Tourism and Convention Bureau
The center of the action is rue du Rhône, home to more than 120 luxury boutiques. For decades, wealthy Arabs on holiday were the street’s best customers. In recent years, however, they have been joined by Russian businessmen and bankers of all nationalities and languages. Global brands (Bulgari, Cartier, Chopard, Van Cleef & Arpels, de Grisogono, Graff) compete with local fine jewelry and watch retailers — among them Les Ambassadeurs and Benoît de Gorski — for the high street business, but customers with real money to spend do their deals in private ateliers, where discretion is prized above all else. Suzanne Syz, a glamorous, Zurich-born redhead who designs one-of-a-kind jewels for collectors from her atelier on rue Céard, swears by the local stone setters and metalsmiths, confessing that she’d never trust her work, set in either platinum, 18-karat gold or titanium, to anyone outside of Geneva.
Anything but neutral A ring with a revolving 83.39-carat black diamond in yellow gold, $1,331,000, from de Grisogono. The global chain of luxury boutiques launched in Geneva in 1996, when then 44-year-old Fawaz Gruosi opened his first shop selling haute black diamond jewelry to jet setters, drawn to the lakeside city for its “global village” ambience.
