Mixing pearls and crystals

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Rustan’s brings in HK jewelry brand

ARAO, a Hong Kong (HK)-based jewelry brand, has found a home in the Philippines in Rustan’s Silver Vault at the Shangri-La Plaza.

It makes sense: the brand’s founder, Mirabel Rosar, has roots in the Philippines. A marketing executive who moved abroad in 2012, she said in an interview after its opening on Dec. 9 at Rustan’s, “The journey of putting up Arao was strongly influenced by my heritage; my origins.”

“I would always get compliments from foreigners about what I wear, what I have. People would always say good things about stuff that I buy from the Philippines,” she said. Since 2012, she has lived in Switzerland, then Australia, and now, in Hong Kong.

While using an array of precious and semiprecious stones, Arao’s jewelry places Golden South Sea pearls (and pearls in general) from the Philippines as its centerpiece. For the Soul collection premiering in Rustan’s, each piece uses a solitaire baroque pearl which is then strung with crystals like aquamarine, amethyst, citrine, smoky quartz, clear quartz, larimar, moonstone, prehnite or rose quartz.

“I wanted to create a collection that would really speak to the souls of our women and men of pearls. When I developed the design with our team, we returned to our ethos of everyday luxury. What is everyday luxury and how does this look like today?” Ms. Rosar said in a statement.

Each crystal is imbued with meaning (for example, aquamarine for calming senses while ringing in emotional clarity and balance, or prehnite for unconditional love). During the interview, Ms. Rosar was herself wearing a collar made of fillets of agate, each as large as a baby’s palm, connected by a baroque pearl at the center. Baroque pearls, irregularly shaped unlike the customary round, perfect, pearl, are never the same, ensuring that each piece is unique.

“Having grown up in the Philippines, surrounded by pearls, you think it’s common,” she said. Then she told a story about her German mother-in-law, who visited the Philippines and immediately asked her where to get good pearls. “In that part of the world, it’s so expensive,” Ms. Rosar pointed out.

“Every time she has pearls, she’s always showing off to her friends,” she said. “It’s really something that we should be proud of.”

DOING BUSINESS IN HONG KONG
Despite her own Philippine roots, she mainly does her business in Hong Kong — they do pop-ups in some of the city’s most prestigious hotels, but they also have a home at Chaless Wellness and Beauty down Hong Kong’s Aberdeen Street.

“The Hong Kong market is actually part of the top five per capita consumption of jewelry,” she noted, and as part of her research, she found out that most of the countries she’s lived in were in the top five as well. “Maybe really that’s the best way to go,” she said about setting up in Hong Kong. “You have four jewelry fairs every year. It’s represented by global brands. It’s a good way to really look at what’s happening in the market. Not just with trends but also technology, advancements. That I learned from there.”

As an example, their creative director, Luis Espiritu (also a known society columnist) pointed out that they combined semiprecious stones and pearls before they became fashionable. They also like stones that aren’t so common: for example, every color of sapphire except blue.

The brand was established in 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hong Kong then had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, with quarantines in place that were only lifted in the early months of 2023. Oddly enough, she said “I think that was a good time to start a business,” because “people couldn’t travel.”

A report from Kearney states that while the pandemic caused sales in the luxury sector to fall, an upshot was seen easing into the period (https://tinyurl.com/yne9npxp). In fact, luxury brand Hermès managed to beat its Q4 2019 results in Q3 2020.

“People were spending a lot more. The luxury industry surged during COVID because travel was down,” Ms. Rosar recalled. “In fact, when COVID ended, luxury was affected. I was (on) a huge surge, and then all of a sudden, things normalized. People started with travel, spending less on luxury.

“Small brands that were more agile, able to deliver products… with designs that are relevant to the market: that’s how small brands are coping compared to the bigger brands,” she said.

SUSTAINABLE PEARLS?
Arao’s website says, “Mirabel also has a great love for the ocean, and enjoys surfing with her husband, Till. This love inspired her to promote sustainability through ethical pearl farming.”

It turns out that natural pearl farming is sustainable by default: “The business of pearls is really a sustainable business, because pearls cannot grow in an unhealthy environment,” she said. “Promoting healthy pearl farming is actually pushing for sustainable oceans.”

She’s looking into other ways to be more sustainable: they sometimes use the shell itself for jewelry (while dining on the oyster itself), and they’re thinking of using recycled gold (the expense of melting it down and removing impurities, however, is a challenge).

“We only live in one earth, and we know that resources are scarce,” she said. “We’re lucky that we have enough resources, but we also have to be mindful that these are limited.” — Joseph L. Garcia