Making treasure from ‘trash’: Jade Trau gives fine jewellery a fresh twist
- The brand combines top quality modern stones with vintage silhouettes inspired by Victorian ‘odds and ends’
- Founder Jade Lustig’s family has been in the diamond industry for five generations, but she is the first to design her own jewellery
How did you get started in this business? “My great-great-grandfather started in the diamond trade in Antwerp, Belgium. When my grandfather moved to America, he continued the business. My upbringing has been around cutting and polishing rough diamonds but jewellery making was a complete mystery to me.”
What changed? “I knew I wanted to be a jewellery designer. I took a few classes, including drawing and metalsmithing. I loved the creative element. We were still manufacturing diamonds. Ten times a year we would get a box of rough diamonds from De Beers and polish and sell them. But with globalisation, it wasn’t cost-effective to do it that way any more.
“I had all this heritage and had become an expert in the diamond business. I started doing custom jewellery pieces instead.”
How did that go? “I understand the drive to want to buy classic diamond jewellery. But why do we spend so much money to look exactly the same? Can we find something that has a sense of individuality? That’s how the collection came to be. I launched it with 28 styles, learning how far I can push design while still calling it classic.”
What was your process? “I’ve always collected vintage pieces. I had a huge collection of lockets, which I ended up selling. I went to vintage markets to get more lockets but realised they had become a big craze and I couldn’t find them. It opened my eyes and I started seeing charms and trinkets and little pieces of chains, amazing old Victorian odds and ends, and clasps. There is that sentiment of one person’s trash is another person’s treasure – I wanted the trash.”