This will be a once-in-a-lifetime trip to JCK Las Vegas for jewelry designer Julia Chafé (pictured): She is exhibiting on her own for the first time, with her new fine jewelry brand, and she is about 23 weeks pregnant with her second child.
Her pregnancy was announced in a very Julia Chafé kind of way: via Instagram post featuring Isha Ambani Piramal, as the Indian businesswoman and social celebrity was prepping for the Met Gala. Chafé was visiting to talk jewelry, and Ambani Piramal noticed her growing bump.
The designer already has a baby, her son, at home. “They will be 19 months apart, which I am very crazy for doing,” she says. “I’ve always heard it’s better when they’re closer in age, so they grow up with a life partner.”
Chafé’s community of 1.2 million jewelry-loving social media followers adored the pregnancy post. As a jewelry influencer, she talks design, collecting, and celebrity jewelry culture in a fresh, charming, and authoritative way.
On Instagram, Chafé has shared her preparations for JCK, where she will showcase her eponymous brand (which also goes by the name Jewels With Jules). She will be part of the NouvelleBox design cohort, and will also be a panelist at a JCK Talks session about the influence of social media and celebrities (Showcase Stage, 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 30).
“I am fairly new to the retail journey. I am sure that this JCK show will be a crash course for me in retail and how it works,” Chafé says.
As a second-generation jeweler—her father and his brothers have been wholesaling sapphires at Intercolor USA for the past 45 years—Chafé has experience at Las Vegas Jewelry Week. “I’ve been attending JCK and working at my dad’s booth since my senior year of high school,” she says.
“It’s a real honor to come back now with my own brand. Although my nerves are high, I know that I have loyal community who loves my pieces. I am just looking for the right long-term strategic partners to share my community with.”
As a kid, Chafé never thought she would work in the jewelry industry. Once she joined the family business after college, however, she fell in love with it—and finally realized her father was kinda cool for what he did for a living, she says.
While creating online content for Intercolor USA, Chafé started building her own audience, most of whom were there for the jewelry.
“Since I was making jewelry for myself using my dad’s stones, my community asked me to share my jewels with them. And that’s how Julia Chafé fine jewelry began,” she says. When she dropped her first piece—a rainbow sapphire choker—she sold 30 immediately.
“That’s when I knew that this was a serious opportunity for me to take what started as a fun, creative outlet to a more serious place,” Chafé says.
“I approach my brand with a new way to do retail. I don’t think that the jewelry industry quite yet understands how powerful of a tool social media is. I hope to learn from the old ways of the industry and help teach new ways of jewelry retail that don’t exist yet today.”
She’s looking forward to soaking in every bit of the Vegas show—and of her pregnancy—and feels this is a proud moment for her and her family.
“My love for the jewelry industry starts with the people in our industry. We are so lucky to be surrounded by some of the smartest, most generous people in the world. There are no ‘big dogs’ who make our industry feel shrunken,” Chafé says. “Our industry is made up mostly of family businesses and solo entrepreneurs. That’s just one thing that makes our industry so unique and so special.
“Jewelry itself also has many more layers of storytelling than any other industry. We are the only industry in the world that sells a product that will never ever go bad. We promise an eternity of stories to our customers,” she says. “My late grandmother was a jewelry lover and jewelry collector. Wearing her pieces and telling her stories are what made me truly realize the power of fine Jewelry.”
(Photos courtesy of Julia Chafé)
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