Jeweller and watchmaker Fawaz Gruosi recounts his leap to iconic status in a mere handful of years after starting de Grisogono as a ‘small miracle'.
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BEHOLD, the FG One - an original timepiece with snap-back hands and jump hour windows in an avant-garde styling that commands a second, lingering look. Of the hundreds of new watch models that debut at the renowned BaselWorld fair in Switzerland every year, few are so original as to earn a ‘world first' listing.
The FG One takes its name from its creator, Fawaz Gruosi. It is the first time the iconic designer is placing his own initials on his watch creation. But first times are not new to Gruosi who, in spite of unexpected success in the watch arena, does not think of himself as a watchmaker.
“I am a jeweller,” he says, straight and simple. He was the first to introduce and make black diamonds fashionable to the West in 1996; the first to design with icy diamonds; the first with galuchat (stingray skin) in jewellery; first again with brown diamonds, and then with Browny Brown Gold - a toasty shade of rose gold exclusive to de Grisogono, the luxury brand he launched in 1995.
The brand had its beginnings in a small shop Gruosi started in partnership in 1993. Then 41 years old, Gruosi had fallen in love with jewellery after stumbling into his first job “for pocket money” at a jewellery store when he was 18. He went on to be wooed by and work for brands like Harry Winston and Bvlgari before he quit and entertained ideas of going solo.
“I just wanted to have a little shop, sit down in the shop, buy and sell a few things, and have a relaxed life,” he says. In this respect, he admits he failed miserably.
By 2000, de Grisogono had ‘blinged' its way to the crème de la crème of haute luxury with its bold jewellery - Gruosi never saw any point in small jewellery; jewellery was to be noticed, and admired. Today, he is lucky if he gets to spend a week at home with family and friends; business has grown that much.
The first watch he designed was “a joke - I never believed in watches,” Gruosi recalls. “Geneva was my beginning and I didn't have much traffic in the shop; two to three people in one day, sometimes no one. I didn't want to (lower) my line of jewellery. I wanted to invent something… a watch. So I did this watch… But I am jewellery-minded and it was expensive - the first one was a piece of ‘ice' because it was all diamonds.” With its geometric lines, clarity and purity of form, it was called the Ice Cube.
Not being a watchmaker, he sought the opinion of his in-laws, who own and manage luxury brand Chopard. The conversation went sort of like this: Father-in-law: “You are crazy doing watches now, this is not your business. How many do you want to do?” Gruosi: “I don't know… five or six a year?” Father-in-law: “I buy now, ten.” Gruosi: “OK.” “I needed the money,” admits Gruosi. “Then I saw the success (Chopard) had…” Ice Cube catapulted into 2003's top ten luxury watches.
“I was - in a nice way - very jealous, and that is why I started to make watches. The joke finally became serious when in 2004 we closed 3,300 watches.” By 2005, Gruosi had hit almost 5,000 watch orders - a small miracle for a company doing watches (at that Basel fair) for only five years.” It is a number he wants to stop at to maintain de Grisogono's exclusivity. He sells about as many pieces of jewellery, coveted by the world's wealthiest for their exclusivity. He rarely makes more than two or three of the same piece. Many are unique, involving stones that have to be cut to his specifications, under his experienced eye as a diamond-cutter, and in colour combinations like no other.
While other brands are all for global conquest, Gruosi says, “My maximum is 20 shops around the world. I am not in to sell quantity - I just want to have fun… not doing it in a commercial way, I can express myself in every way possible without being scared. And I realise that when you are not scared, it really works.”
Black Sensation
“I didn't really like the black diamond,” says Fawaz Gruosi, the world's authority on the black diamond. “It was the idea I loved. When I came across the first black diamonds, I said, ‘Oh my god, what can I do with that?' Then, slowly, I saw it was fashion for women.”
“At the time I started, it was very much a fashion for men too. Armani, Versace — they were all doing black for men. And then I thought black is magic, it is mysterious, sexy, so I knew it was something, and I did my first piece — it was a contrast in white and black, and it brought me luck.”
Story Kim Lee - www.solitaire.com.sg
