Audacious Jewels, Raw, Yet Refined.....Fashionweekly..On Fow24news.com

Brazilian designer Ara Vartanian is conquering the jewellery world with the help of Kate, Naomi, astronauts - and Harvey Nichols......

KATE MOSS came straight from the airport, so you are not the only one,” said Ara Vartanian as I arrived at his top-floor São Paolo studio, with its precious stones, striking jewellery and - when the Brazilian designer flung open a door - its 30 workers in a room looking over the tree-filled city.

Now Kate and her friend Naomi Campbell no longer have to go to Brazil to track down a piece by Ara.

“Ara Vartanian” is written discreetly above the door of his London store, where textures of Brazilian stone and wood offset the sparkle of two-finger double rings and gems that snake around ear lobes. Open since the late summer in Bruton Street, a small road off Berkeley Square, it is housed in the former garage of advertising magnate Maurice Saatchi. Now his many customers from across Europe can visit to take advantage of the “Brexit” fluctuation of the pound sterling and save up to 30 per cent.

There is yet another London destination as Harvey Nichols opens its re-furnished jewellery rooms with Ara Vartanian in prime position. He joins Annoushka, Marco Bicego, Talisman Gallery and six other forward-thinking jewellers to give accessories in the Knightsbridge store a more contemporary, cool, and innovative touch.

But in spite of these international adventures, this Brazilian jeweller’s heart is on one thing: the stones and how to set them.

In practically everything that you see, the stone comes first,” said Ara, who had nuggets of amethyst, emerald, sapphire and tourmaline laid neatly on his desk in his São Paulo design space.

I put this in front of me and ask, ‘What am I going to do with this stone? A pendant? A ring? Or a one-side earring?’” he explains. “It depends on how I feel at that particular moment, because every day is different, everything is handmade - I can explore and not do repeat pieces. It is important for me to give a jewel an ingenious design. If I am free to explore, explore, explore - it sometimes goes Boom!”

I ask Ara about the emerald earrings that are hanging like ripe fruit from their narrow top; and enquire about the pair of grass-green oval stones, laid flat in his palm as we circle the workroom.

It’s a pear shape - there don’t have to be too many ingredients; just a few that are cooked right,” the jeweller says, explaining over lunch the fastidious care he takes not just in how the jewellery is made, but with its provenance and composition, using software developed for future identification of each major stone.