In this year’s Best of the Best, we continue to honour the brands and people who have continued to create covetable products, even in the midst of a global pandemic. Here, we have Fawaz Gruosi win ‘best comeback’
Almost 30 years ago, Fawaz Gruosi established De Grisogono and became one of the most colourful characters in high jewellery’s highest strata. His unabashedly glamorous designs were worn by blue bloods from Geneva to Doha, and his adoring clientele would gather annually at the jeweller’s star-studded fetes in Cannes. But in 2018, the party ended when Gruosi left De Grisogono. The new owners couldn’t make it work and the company shuttered for good in January 2020. By December, Gruosi was back with a new brand and a flagship on London’s Berkeley Square.
The name on the door is now Gruosi’s own, but his penchant for vivid colour and sinuous silhouettes remains unchanged. Not one for understatement, he centred his new collection on opulent, one-of-a-kind pieces with exceptional gemstones, such as a necklace strung with some 735.85 carats of un-oiled Zambian emeralds. Even at his most demure, Gruosi stuns. A relatively simple pair of drop earrings features six octagonal-cut, unheated, royal-blue Ceylon sapphires weighing about 12.55 carats. When asked what’s different this time around, Gruosi admits he isn’t trying to reinvent himself: “It’s basically still De Grisogono – it’s me.”
