2 days ago
The Aaron Jah Stone Pocket Watch Is Couture's Most Coveted Timepiece
The gem-set pocket watch by Aarn Jah Stone designer Cyril Bismuth, on show at the Couture Show in ... More Las Vegas this week.
It's Las Vegas Jewelry Week and at the Couture Show, Aaron Jah Stone is showing for the first time. Behind the brand, is the Parisian jewelry designer and passionate stone hunter Cyril Bismuth, whose 'spiritual jewelry' already has a firm following in the US market. With him in Vegas, is a very special jewel designed to mark a milestone — and it's up for the Best in Innovative Award.
Bismuth decided to create a 15th anniversary pocket watch on the way back from a trip to Dallas, as he tells me, when we meet in a Paris restaurant. 'I love the ways Texans can combine the classic jeans-cowboy boots-Stetson look with French designer luxury.' Until a few years ago, he admits he 'didn't know much about the State beyond JR Ewing in Dallas,' but he has since made many friends in this most welcoming of States.
In gem-set silver, the Aaron Jah Stone pocketwatch feels pleasingly heavy.
Set into rugged, textured silver, a rainbow mix of faceted and polished sapphires, tourmalines and turquoises mark the hours in the 36mm watch case. The piece is attached to a string of his signature hard stone beads, with custom clips so it can be worn as a necklace or pocket watch inspired by the old-style elegance of modern Texan style. The piece feels heavy in the hand, and significant; a fitting celebration of his first 15 years in business. With a carefully designed interior, it closes with a safe and satisfying snap.
Bismuth's eyes light up when he's talking about gemstones, whether it's buying turquoise at a mine in Arizona, or sifting through watermelon tourmalines and Zambian sapphires in Bangkok. He describes what it was like to buy a gemstone in the backstreets of Rangoon; a pale blue, slightly starred sapphire cabochon. It would be the first time he had bought a sapphire back from Mayanmar: 'it was the stone of my whole trip,' he says, and he went on to set the sapphire in the first ever silver ring he made, at the Haute Ecole de Joaillerie jewelry school in Paris.
Aaron Jah Stone's pocket watch is designed for a 36mm watch.
'I've collected stones ever since I was a kid,' he says. 'Even worthless rocks have always been fascinating to me'. After completing his training, he began making hard stone bracelets, and elaborate strings of precious beads strung on his signature red thread, before moving onto small collections, like the Phoenix collection, in which opal eyes wink out from beds of diamond pave as they climb ears and encircle fingers. It's jewelry made with intention, each stone chosen for its properties, and it soon caught celebrity eyes.
Aaron Jah Stone came to prominence in Paris in the early 2010s and achieved international visibility when Bismuth's friend Sebastien Jondeau showed Karl Lagerfeld his jewelry. Lagerfeld wore one of his necklaces in Singapore at the Chanel resort show in 2013 and Bismuth ended up creating a new necklace for the Chanel Creative Director at each Fashion Week thereafter. Before long, Bismuth was front-row at the Chanel runway and his designs were seen on members of Lagerfeld's inner circle, including models Lily Rose Depp and Cara Delevingne.
A watermelon tourmaline and gold necklace by Aaron Jah Stone
Since then, he has created jewelry for celebrities from Michael Jordan to Pharrell, and appeared in glossy magazines and newspapers worldwide. But he became disillusioned with the media after a time and took a step back from the limelight to build up a solid global collector base. He first met the Couture founder Gannon Brousseau a decade ago, but at the time the Paris luxury store Montaigne Market gave him all the international visibility he needed. Fast forward ten years, and the time is finally right to take Aaron Jah Stone to the Desert City.
It's a strong edition for French independent designer brands at Couture, some of whom have previously been more tentative participants, citing travel and booth cost as barriers and preferring to show on home ground during Paris Fashion Weeks. In recent years, French-owned brands have become more prominent. After winning the award for Best in Debuting in 2022, Marie Lichtenberg is now a regular, as well as Yvonne Leon, Rainbow K and Maison Alix Dumas, showcasing the breadth of creativity from French designers to a cohort of premium international buyers and press.
Cyril Bismuth, the jewelry designer behind Aaron Jah Stone
Although Bismuth retains a loyal French clientele, his US collectorship developed rapidly. 'I understood early on that my collectors already had all the classics from the big houses,' he explains. 'They wanted unique, meaningful jewels that they could stack, or one-off masterpieces to wear as a statement. Americans are lot more sensitive to spiritual jewelry than the French, and I love that!', he laughs. 'They choose bigger colored stones and understand the rarity of the piece, because I produce mainly bespoke and very small series. There's an element of rejection of the luxury 'uniform'.'
'When you buy one of my pieces, you're buying an energy, a story. It's everything from day one of my stone-sourcing research, my trips, all the different stages in the making process in my Parisian workshops, right up to my Instagram post celebrating the final piece,' Bismuth says. And Aaron Jah Stone has a busy summer to come, with a stop-off at that Arizona turquoise mine after Couture, before heading back to Europe for private sales with his international clientele in villas and on yachts in the Mediterranean. September will see him back Stateside for a string of trunk shows in New York, Dallas, Aspen and Miami. I get the sense that whether he's sifting rough turquoise or meeting new clients, busy is exactly how Bismuth likes it.
