Rio markets Sunshine diamond collection to the Chinese

BEAUTIFUL Australian diamonds are finding their way into Chinese fashion jewellery.

Artemide Empatia table lamp

THE deep red colours of Australia’s landscape and its rich Aboriginal culture are the inspiration for a new collection of jewellery featuring gems from Rio Tinto’s Argyle mine in Western Australia.

Aimed at China’s emerging middle class, the Chow Tai Fook “Sunshine” collection, is promoted under the tagline “Light up your life with Australian diamonds”. Apart from a special white and champagne diamond-encrusted tiara, the bulk of the pieces are sold as “affordable fashion” jewellery and range from $350 to $1000. The collection is the fourth creative collaboration between Rio and Chinese giant Chow Tai Fook, which retails Argyle diamonds in the majority of its 2000 stores in China.

Art of reflection

The latest creation from Italian light company Artemide is a combination of traditional Venetian glass-blowing techniques and advanced LED technology. Each Empatia table lamp is a one-off piece handmade by a master craftsmen. Previous works by Artemide are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The new suit

Giorgio Armani began experimenting with men’s tailoring in 1975, deconstructing the traditional suit jacket to take out its “rigidity and formalism’’. Over the past two decades, the raglan jacket has had many evolutions. The double-breasted look ruled from the late 1970s to the 1990s, became single breasted at the turn of the millennium and has included slimmer fits to the body. The Armani suit, in all its forms, has been immortalised on film, from Oceans Thirteen to The Wolf of Wall Street to The Untouchables. This season’s version brings back the double-breasted form. “The process of deconstruction of men’s tailoring that I began in 1975 has not stopped but is expressed in new ways every season,’’ says Armani. “The new raglan jacket is the supreme expression of this: lightweight, without any padding or details - I even did away with the breast pocket - so that it looks like a cardigan. And yet it is so perfect, a jacket you can forget about once you have it on.’’