What Women Buy When They Treat Themselves

Posted by charmslife on May 15th, 2014

Tomoko Takami bought her first piece of jewelry when she was 19, on a trip to Paris from her home in Japan.

“I bought a Christian Dior 18-karat gold necklace because I wanted to have something as a memory of my first adventure,” said Ms. Takami, a translator, writer and editor who is now 42. “I worked very hard during my first year in college and paid all of the trip expenses myself. I felt I deserved something shiny and grown up.”

Ms. Takami’s tale is increasingly typical. Women are not waiting for a man to buy them jewelry. They are buying what they like, when they want.

According to Forbes.com, women now control $20 trillion in annual consumer spending globally. They are transforming the marketplace, and that includes jewelry.

A woman who buys jewelry for herself is “definitely a trend,” even in the rarefied world of Graff Diamonds, where the average price for something sparkly is $150,000, said Henri Barguirdjian, who leads Graff’s United States operations. “We are seeing more and more women achieving careers on their own, and they can afford to buy their own jewelry,” Mr. Barguirdjian said in an interview. “I would say about 25 percent of our customers are women buying for themselves.”

They tend to be in their 40s or older, he said, because “they have to achieve some kind of wealth to afford us, and that successful a career doesn’t happen in five minutes.”

Not all women wait until they have built their careers. “I left Fiji, where I grew up, and started my first restaurant in Auckland at age 27,” said Julie Alexander. “It was a success after the first year, and I was so proud of myself I purchased a diamond stud earring.”

Ms. Alexander later left New Zealand for London, where she started an international legal recruitment business. The timing was bad: “I started in 2008 when lawyers were being laid off and hardly any law firms were recruiting,” she said. “Placing a lawyer was a blessing, and I would treat myself with an expensive piece of jewelry every time.”

A study on jewelry purchases by the market research firm Mintel, conducted in 2012, showed that more than half of the 2,000 women who took part bought jewelry simply to treat themselves.

“A lot of working women come to see us in order to choose a piece of jewelry when they get bonuses,” said Marie-Hélène de Taillac, a French designer based in Paris and Jaipur, India, whose jewelry is priced between $800 and $150,000. “These bonuses are the fruits of their labors; it’s their reward.”

Women are also buying jewelry for its investment value. Conventional wisdom is that men buy jewelry for investment and women because they like it, but women now realize that “jewelry is a tangible asset to include in your portfolio; it’s cash in the bank,” said Lisa Hubbard, co-chairwoman of Sotheby’s international jewelry division.

“Unlike a dress or car, jewelry doesn’t wear out,” said Jerry Ehrenwald, president of the International Gemological Institute, which has offices worldwide to authenticate gemstones and jewelry. “Diamonds really are forever. After 20 years, a fancy car needs to be replaced, whereas a diamond improves in value.”

Roberta Bartolini Fonseca de Castro, 32, is a lawyer living in Rio de Janeiro with a sweeping view of the Copacabana beach and a growing jewelry collection. “All my jewelry I buy because it is a personal investment, such as buying a property or shares in any company,” she said. “I own jewelry from my mother, grandmother and husband, but the most expensive jewelry I buy myself. They are investments that have a place in my heart.”

Buying jewelry as an investment is contributing to the rise of gem sales in Russia and the Middle East, where laws offer little financial security to divorced women. “Women buy jewelry as a hedge, a mobile nest egg they can take with them in the event of divorce,” Mr. Ehrenwald said.

An increase in the number of divorces, even in countries where women have better legal protection, is also contributing to the growing numbers of women who buy jewelry for themselves.

Molly Schueler Hurley, a former Vogue editor, is a case in point. “After I got divorced from my first husband, I bought myself a Cartier watch, as a kind of present to myself,” she said. “I did not care to wear any of the jewelry he bought me.”

As well as being an investment, jewelry can be a bond between generations. “All the women who have purchased my pieces for themselves in the $200,000 to $300,000 range have expressed their desire to pass the jewelry down to their children,” said Monique Péan, a designer whose jewelry features fossilized dinosaur or woolly mammoth bones.

Zenaide Giunta, 40, who manages a large family estate in Italy, said she fell in love with jewelry after inheriting pieces from her grandmother, the Marchioness Zenaide Del Gallo di Roccagiovine, who was an expert on silver at Bulgari.

Ms. Hubbard, of Sotheby’s, said: “When I first started working at Sotheby’s 35 years ago, people asked me, ‘Why are you wasting your time? There’s no role for women here.”’

“The audiences used to be male dealers buying to pass on to male customers. There was no room for women,” she said. “But that has changed dramatically. Daughters were brought into the business. And more private individuals found their way into the auction world and bought directly. I see more and more women sitting in the audience, and I see more women buying for themselves than I see couples buying.”

And, among couples, many women are guiding the jewelry purchases — and helping to pay for them. The Knot, a wedding advice website, published the results of a survey last fall showing that a growing number of women were helping to pay for their own engagement rings.

Inès de la Fressange, a French designer, style arbiter and former model, offers perhaps the best reason for a woman to buy her own jewelry, citing the experience of receiving a groan-inducing gift from husband or boyfriend: “The men ask why you don’t wear their present. It’s a nightmare,” she said in an email. “Buy your jewelry yourself and “you get exactly what you want.”

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