Is ‘Diamond Divas’ the Reality Show the Jewelry Industry Needs?

By Karen Dybis | June 10, 2025

With its new online reality series Diamond Divas, the all-female team behind New York City–based brand Shahla Karimi hopes to show the world what it is like to work in fine jewelry and all of the humor that comes with this career.

The first two episodes of Diamond Divas—”Mike’s Big Year” and “Practice Makes Perfect“—along with a sizzle reel are now available on Shahla Karimi’s social media platforms. The series is produced by Sophia Strawser, Jesse Korman, and Shahla Karimi COO Christina Biaggi.

“We want to show they can get through anything thrown their way,” says Strawser, the showrunner. “It also brings people into our world and hopefully encourages future customers to want to come in and meet us.”

Strawser describes the series as “Say Yes to the Dress meets The Office.” She says she and her collaborators put Diamond Divas on social media because smartphones are the primary device for media consumption today, but they wouldn’t mind if a reality TV production company came knocking with an idea to turn it into a television show.

“There is so much storytelling in jewelry that we wanted to find a way to do that within the reality series setting,” Strawser says. “But we wanted to focus on the relationships. I have a comedy background, and we all agreed that seemed like the right direction for Diamond Divas to go in.”

In other words, Diamond Divas is going for laughs rather than gasps: You won’t see Shahla Karimi employees flipping tables or gossiping. Instead, the series features real-life scenarios that were workshopped beforehand. Actors and improv comics play the customers.

“We use a two-camera production method that we film over three days,” Strawser explains. “The goal is to highlight each Diva while also creating a series that has the potential for longevity.”

Shahla Karimi plans to post three episodes of Diamond Divas per week during its debut phase, says Strawser. The show can be viewed on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts.

Emma Scaramozzino, Shahla Karimi’s director of sales and creative design, says brand founder Karimi often referred to her jewelers as “diamond divas” because of how drama-filled her workshop (which started on 47th Street in New York’s Diamond District) could get when there were unusual customer requests.

“We all have different stories and different personalities,” says Scaramozzino. “For example, I’m the ham, and I love the drama.… Every single person we work with is such a character that we wanted to make them characters.”

Top: The showroom staff of Shahla Karimi, now stars of the reality series Diamond Divas (photo courtesy of Shahla Karimi)