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Fifteen years after launching his namesake jewellery business, Eddie Borgo is starting over, in a sense. The designer picked the whirlwind of Paris Fashion Week to unveil a first fine jewellery collection called The Palms — 10 limited-edition jewels made of recycled gold, some with GIA-certified vintage diamonds. And, the brand name is Edward — not Eddie — Borgo.
The timing couldn’t be better. Global sales of fine jewellery are on a roll, predicted to rise by 6.5 per cent a year to top $85.8 billion by 2032, according to research firm Future Market Insights. The category is showing no signs of slowing down despite broader concerns that the luxury market’s post-lockdown surge is over.
Borgo was happy with the initial reaction. “It was so gratifying, and I haven’t had a feeling like that for a very long time,” the designer says during a Zoom interview from his studio in LA. “I was nervous. I was [also proud] because I created it on my own, financed it on my own, and on my own terms.”
The Palms is targeted at a new category of clientele happy to spend, whether longtime followers who now have deeper pockets or “collectors in places we never thought about before” in fashion-adjacent destinations such as art fairs or exclusive tropical resorts. While palm trees are the salient feature in LA, Borgo notes that he chose the motif for its symbolic resonance across history and cultures and because it lends itself well to studies of movement.
To replicate that feeling in jewellery, Borgo has spent five years — and an estimated $250,000 — collaborating with his longtime right hand, Brooklyn-based industrial designer Nathaniel Deverich, and local ateliers in LA to develop a new process. As a result, The Palms shapes are produced flat, “like a pressed flower in a book”, and then hand-sculpted into one-of-a-kind pieces whose curled fronds appear windblown or are coaxed into prongs for gemstones.
To source them, a contact at the Natural Diamond Council connected Borgo with a respected dealer of vintage and antique stones, who supplied him with pear, marquise, and tapered cuts dating from the 1920s to 1940s.
“I knew from a responsibility perspective I didn’t want to use new mined diamonds,” the designer explains. A consultancy with a lab-grown diamond brand led him to eliminate that water and energy greedy option. “We have enough in the world: why are we mining new diamonds, and why are we creating new things? I find diamonds that have been cherished by someone else in another lifetime really beautiful,” he says.
Early success — but at a price
It’s a long way from where he started, and where he left off. Following the launch of Borgo’s namesake geometric and punk-inflected line in 2008, life happened at warp speed: in 2010, he received the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award and $100,000; 2011 brought the CFDA Swarovski Award for innovation in accessory design and the $100,000 Vogue Tiffany Grant.
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