Pearl Paradise Lookbook Fall/Winter 2013

Twice a year I go into hiding (primarily in my office) for about three and a half weeks. I take very minimal custom orders, take very short breaks to eat and go home very late. Excluding the November to December holiday season, it’s the busiest time for me and the creative team. We create Lookbooks; catalogs filled with new jewelry designs for the upcoming season. These lookbooks are aimed for semi0-annual events that our PR team holds in New York. We call it the “Editorial Event” and the team holds numerous appointments with stylists, bloggers and editors from magazines like Martha Stewart Weddings, O, Elle, and so on. Through these appointments our jewelry gets pulled for photo shoots and styling celebrities. We’ve been lucky to have our pearls on Angelina Jolie, First Lady Michelle Obama, Taylor Swift and Olivia Wilde to name a few.

When I go to Hong Kong for our buying trip, or to the Tucson Gem Shows, I am always on the lookout for unique finds that can be featured. We create 4-6 collections for Pearl Paradise for each lookbook. Fall/Winter 2013 we created 5 collections: Grand, Petite, Carved, Gray and Essential Collections.

On one of our Hong Kong trips we bought a loose lot of very large Tahitian baroque pearls and were able to create large strands that were up to 16 mm in size. We paired the pearls with findings that were black rhodium plated to give a dark edgier look - the Grand Collection.

Following the Grand Collection (and for my affinity for tiny pearls) I created the Petite Collection.
This collection was particularly a “win” for us. The Empress necklace was featured in Martha Stewart Wedding magazine recently. This piece was a challenge in all levels. It took me hours to knot and nest the strands and we had to re-shoot many times to lay the piece for photo. Angela spent a lot of time retouching the photo as well but worth all the hard work!

We introduced the Galatea carved pearls in our Carved Collection. We had never bought Galatea pearls before and we wanted to see what the reaction would be. Our PR team loved it, and they are currently working on some press coverage. I personally love the necklace with different carved designs on each pearl with a hidden magnetic clasp.

The Gray Collection is something very different from a standard Pearl Paradise items. We like to have pearls that are in natural colors (except for black Freshwater, black Akoyas and chocolate Tahitians) but when I saw these dyed gray fireballs I wanted to give it a try. I designed it with white gold and diamond link components to mix the organic curvy shape of pearls with geometric lines.

We are constantly getting "pull requests" for classic pearl styles. Through the years of creating these lookbooks, we've become sort of the go-to company for pearls. The Essential Collection shows our most popular classic styles and some with a little twist of imagination.

Our best seller Freshadama necklace in 7.5-8 mm

All of these styles are designed, made, photographed and cataloged in a short amount of time along with 10-15 collections that we make for our sister site Pearl Collective. We now have a team of five that work around the clock (while also working on the day-to-day Pearl Paradise operations!) to make this happen. It’s an exhausting project but always an exhilarating one!