Ana Khouri’s $80,000 Earrings Are a Glittering Optical Illusion
If you’re trying to spend your way to true affection, this dynamic duo goes the distance.
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- For Ana Khouri, who grew up in Brazil and started a jewelry business in the U.S. in 2013, the appeal of earrings is their sculptural potential, as opposed to their being merely pretty. This approach has paid off: She’s become the jeweler du jour among Hollywood’s most discerning dressers, ranging from breakout star Claire Foy to the more established Glenn Close, who wore these $80,000 tanzanite Teresa earrings with a silver Gabriela Hearst number at the Critics’ Choice Awards last month. They combine the current yen for statement-making “ear pieces,” as Khouri calls them, with colored stones, another trendy motif on runways—and lobes—this season.
THE COMPETITION
• Jeweler to the stars Lynn Ban makes a similarly swoopy pair of $9,500 earrings that come with 1.85 carats of white diamonds offset with Japanese freshwater pearls.
• Since 2007 the fourth-generation Fendi heiress Delfina Delettrez has been designing modernist jewelry with strong, graphic colors. One recent diamond-and-18-karat-gold piece ($1,045) rests weightlessly on top of the ear.
• Ara Vartanian worked with model Kate Moss on a gold earring that dangles a mother-of-pearl crescent and a round-cut red garnet ($4,719).
THE CASE
These Khouri earrings attach through the lobe like a normal pair, with a swirly upper section that looks as if it’s piercing the inside of the ear as well. The result is an effect loosely termed a “dangling sapphire,” in which the stones hover below as if floating in space. The unconventional look is still a comfortable one to wear—it doesn’t hurt that they’re made of 18-karat “fairmined” white gold with 2.4 carats of oval white diamonds and 13.42 carats of tanzanite stones. Keep in mind that these kinds of sculptural pieces, like shoes, are often not interchangeable; you might stick yourself if you try to put them in the wrong ear. $80,000 for the pair; anakhouri.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gaddy at jgaddy@bloomberg.net, Chris Rovzar
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