Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.
This week’s guest is fine jewelry designer Lucy Delius. Before launching her business in 2022, Lucy worked in the jewelry industry on the PR side. It helped hone her understanding of the customer in what is a pretty stressful time for luxury. The prices of gold and silver have been rising for months, and Lucy checks them religiously.
Lucy launched a collection of black pearl jewelry last week. I called her up to talk about necklaces and instead found a treasure trove of business tips for aspiring luxury entrepreneurs. Enjoy.
Hi Lucy, what’s the scoop?
I am in New York at the moment, launching our newest collection called Nyx. It’s based on black baroque pearls. It’s actually the first time we’ve ever worked in pearls.
You’re London-based. Why are you launching in New York?
We’ve got a great client base here. I come to New York a couple of times a year, and we do trunk shows. We also come to LA once a year. And then we sometimes work with external hosts as well — usually existing clients who are well-connected in places where we don’t have a foothold, like Charleston or Miami.
Trunk shows aren’t a new concept, but I feel more and more people are doing them. Is that right?
Trunk shows are a hot selling tool for me and for lots of other brands at the moment. We’ll often book a hotel suite and hold private appointments. It’s a really nice way to meet people. We opened a store in London back in October, but when you don’t have the retail space, they are incredibly helpful. We have a very strong wholesale presence, and I often do personal appearances in-store, which also works great because people love meeting the designer behind a product. But trunk shows are even more intimate.
Why is America such a focus?
When it comes to trunk shows, I used to do them in the UK before I had the store. But I’ve found that as our prices have gone up over the years, that model just doesn’t work so much in the UK. I think there’s a way you present jewelry in the UK, where people expect to see something of high value under a cabinet or sold in a certain way. I don’t think those barriers exist there so much in the US. Also, American women just really understand jewelry. They love entrepreneurship and female-led businesses. It’s been a big driving factor in the growth of the brand.
