Created to have fun the fifteenth anniversary of Gaia Repossi as Creative Director of this Place Vendôme Maison, the story of Repossi’s newest assortment, “Chromatic Sapphires”, is about greater than lovely jewels – it additionally consists of Fairtrade, Fairmined and the sisterhood, with the intention of altering the narrative round gems.

To know extra, we have to journey to the Umba Valley in North Tanzania, the place the unheated sapphires adorning the 15 distinctive jewels within the assortment had been unearthed. What’s fascinating about these sapphires isn’t solely their means to alter hues, passing from pink to inexperienced relying on the lighting, however the truth that Repossi is aware of the title of every of the feminine miners who extracted them from the bottom and paid a good value for the stones. 

Stated like this, it doesn’t sound significantly spectacular. It’s not regular that somebody spending their time from morning to night scraping the earth below the scorching solar with a choose and a shovel deserve a good charge for its work? Sadly, the truth of mining right now remains to be removed from being both regular or honest, and that is significantly true for girls miners. Representing a 3rd of all miners world wide, feminine miners typically mix mining with agricultural actions and consequently know the least in regards to the stones they’re recovering. 

Intent on giving visibility to this hardly ever spoken-about workforce, for the Chromatic Sapphires assortment, Ms Repossi collaborated with Moyo Gems, a programme that helps girls miners to attach immediately with worldwide consumers, enabling them to maintain 95% of the agreed value for the stones they’ve mined, versus the typical of 10 to 30%.

However what’s Moyo Gems precisely? Led by Pact, a non-profit organisation that empowers individuals affected by poverty and marginalisation to beat challenges on their very own, and TAWOMA (the Tanzania Girls Miners Affiliation), alongside some worldwide gem merchants like Maison Piat, Anza Gems and Nineteen48, Moyo Gems collaborates with pre-registered feminine artisanal miners from six villages in Tanzania’s Umba Valley to purchase gems. Initiated by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), who approached Pact in 2016 about piloting a tough gemstone information for miners, Moyo Gems additionally helps the miners to attain the on-boarding standards crucial to hitch the programme: to show they’re engaged on a legitimate and authorized licence; facilitating free well being and security coaching on how one can keep secure at work; and providing complimentary gemmology coaching to assist the feminine miners higher perceive what consumers need. 

Moyo Gems organises common Market Days, the place the miners and their most well-liked native brokers negotiate as a crew to promote their gems to the partnering worldwide gem merchants which are the important shopping for hyperlinks for the programme to work. As a result of Moyo Gems pays all of the requested taxes to the Tanzanian authorities on behalf of the miners, the programme is an actual incentive to commerce formally, slightly than utilizing different provide chains that steadily depend on gems being smuggled out of Tanzania. The worldwide gem merchants then export, reduce and promote the gems to jewelry designers and types like Repossi, who go on to remodel them into beautiful jewels. 

Cristina Maria Villegas, Director of Mines to Markets for Pact, says: “One among our objectives is to alter the way in which individuals take a look at jewelry. We wish to have the supply of the gems be recognised and celebrated as a lot as the ultimate jewelry design. You will need to notice that 80 to 90% of all coloured gems on this planet are mined by artisanal miners in tiny, rural artisanal mines with low atmosphere impression. One false impression about Moyo Gems is that there’s one massive mine the place everybody works as workers. The fact is the exact opposite: the 700 member miners all work in tiny above-the-ground concessions which are near their village and blend mining with their farming actions.”

Regardless of their enormous proportion, Ms Villegas additionally explains that girls miners are sometimes missed and omitted, resulting in poverty and marginalisation. The partnership with TAWOMA is, subsequently, very important to the success of the programme. Right this moment, 60% of Moyo Gems’ miners in Tanzania are girls. Males are welcome, however their participation is capped at 40%, and to make sure that girls all the time keep accountable for an organisation initially designed for their very own wants, they’ll’t run for workplace, and so they can’t vote.  

What can be fascinating about Moyo Gems’ strategy is that, regardless of accepting philanthropy to increase their non-profit providers, they want firms like Repossi, and different jewellers akin to Matturi and Isabella Day, each of which purchase Moyo Gems, to succeed on a industrial foundation. With some massive and constant orders from many jewelry gamers on this planet, Moyo Gems continues to develop, thrive and create a sustainable motion that provides priority to the dignity of beforehand nameless feminine artisanal miners. 

As Gaia Repossi concludes: “Concepts like Moyo Gems go in the correct path. The notice is essential to assist the step-by-step progress of the jewelry trade. We’re all chargeable for altering issues, however beginning small and persevering with in the identical path is how the longer term will evolve. Step-by-step is the important thing. “