In 2020, the Paris-based jeweler Anaïs Rheiner made a gold necklace with a citrine, a gemstone that some imagine bolsters creativity, for her buddy Thibaud Monge Etcheberry. She had no concept on the time that the present would cause them to collaborate on a jewellery line for males.
Known as Healers High-quality Jewellery, the model highlights stones — and the therapeutic powers that some gems are mentioned to have — as a method “to do one thing a little bit extra fashionable” and totally different with jewellery for males, Ms. Rheiner, 41, mentioned throughout a video interview from the area the place she makes her personal line, Anaïs Rheiner Joaillerie, and now Healers.
Launched on Instagram in February 2021, Healers was added to the lads’s providing on mrporter.com inside six months, a lift that led to whole gross sales of 160,000 euros ($165,640) between Jan. 1 and July 31, greater than double the €70,000 that the model had offered in 2021.
Ms. Rheiner funds Healers from her personal enterprise, with Mr. Etcheberry taking an undisclosed fee on gross sales for coping with the business aspect of Healers, together with establishing and managing the retail relationships.
The model additionally debuted within the males’s choices on matchesfashion.com in September. “Numerous jewellery manufacturers we work with for the time being are very polished and this provides one thing a little bit bit extra uncooked, natural trying,” mentioned Ben Carr, a senior purchaser at MatchesFashion.
Costs vary from €580 to €9,660 for rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces. For instance, the Half Chakra Half Chain necklace, made with 18-karat recycled gold in addition to carnelians, amethysts and different stones, is listed on MatchesFashion at $2,244.
Ms. Rheiner mentioned she had been within the therapeutic powers of stones since childhood. “My mum’s at all times introduced me up in a therapeutic world,” she mentioned. “She was at all times into yoga and reiki and it was her method of teaching us.”Because of this, she mentioned, “I’ve at all times felt that options might be present in other ways of therapeutic. I’ve at all times believed in it.”
Alicja Wooles, managing director of Holts Gems, within the Hatton Backyard district of London, offers in valuable and semiprecious gems and has no reference to Healers as a enterprise. She mentioned its method to gems and their particular properties represents a shift. By utilizing valuable steel with therapeutic stones, she mentioned, “they’re taking it from a basic gem fanatic place into the high-end market.” And, she mentioned, “there’s a clear design behind them.”
The duo determined to focus their jewellery on males as “the girl’s market is large and there’s an excessive amount of competitors,” Mr. Etcheberry, 38, mentioned in a video interview. “You want probably to have far more finances than we had.”
Mr. Etcheberry, who’s a former males’s put on designer, mentioned he had discovered that “as a person it was actually onerous” for him to purchase jewellery for himself. “Often it’s not made or created for males,” he mentioned. “It’s made for girls after which tailored to a male buyer. And I needed to do one thing for the male buyer that was made for them.”
Throughout his interview, Mr. Etcheberry wore the citrine pendant with an emerald — which ought to “stabilize feelings,” he wrote in a WhatsApp message — that Ms. Rheiner had made for him, a double preliminary necklace and a rose gold Van Cleef & Arpels marriage ceremony band.
Danielle Thom, a curator on the Design Museum in London, who additionally has no connection to the model, mentioned Healers had been a part of “a rising acceptance of the concept males can adorn themselves with coloration, with ornament and with decoration, and that’s it’s not essentially reflective of their sexual orientation or their gender id.”
Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Ms. Rheiner moved along with her household to Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1983 for her geologist father’s mining job. She knew she needed to work in jewellery so she apprenticed with a neighborhood goldsmith from 2000 to 2004 and graduated in 2006 with a diploma in jewellery design and manufacture from Durban College of Know-how in South Africa.
The following 12 months she moved to Paris and established her model. She met Mr. Etcheberry in 2009 when he got here to a celebration at her boutique as a visitor of a mutual buddy.
Born in Bayonne, France, Mr. Etcheberry studied vogue design in Paris for 2 years earlier than opening his personal males’s put on label in 2010. However by June 2011, he “ran out of cash so I needed to cease,” he mentioned. He spent a number of years styling TV packages, together with the French model of “Dancing With the Stars,” and development forecasting earlier than turning to vogue shopping for in 2016, first at Browns in London after which at Galeries Lafayette in Paris. He now could be merchandising supervisor for males’s and ladies’s footwear for the high-end division retailer La Samaritaine in Paris and the T Galleria by DFS shops inside the DFS (Responsibility Free Customers) Group.
Mr. Etcheberry mentioned his restricted background in jewellery allowed him to deliver an unconventional perspective to the road. For instance, he positioned six oval citrines sideways relatively than lengthwise on a bracelet ($6,292) as a result of, he mentioned, “it seemed higher for males.”
The companions each design items and have divided obligations for the model. Ms. Rheiner often sources gem stones from her father, who has a workshop in Harare, the place a lot of the stones are also minimize. She additionally makes the steel shapes, however the gem setting is finished by native artisans. Mr. Etcheberry runs the enterprise aspect in addition to the model’s web site and Instagram account.
Aquamarine is the model’s finest promoting stone, in line with Mr. Etcheberry. It’s mentioned to assist the wearer “get out of tough conditions,” he mentioned, and the blue stone additionally “catches the attention nevertheless it’s additionally adequately subtle to not be too apparent.”
As to the long run, the duo are planning new merchandise like anklets, as “we’re getting demand from males,” Ms. Rheiner mentioned, and marriage ceremony rings, as “males may put on one thing a bit extra enjoyable.”
Mr. Etcheberry additionally has been searching for new retail companions in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Seoul.
His success would imply extra workers, too, as “there’s X quantity of stones I can receive,” Ms. Rheiner mentioned, “X quantity of hours that I’ve, and have 10 fingers. That’s it.”
