Luxury fashion retailer Net-a-Porter debuted an online platform this week, Net Sustain, that corrals fashion, jewelry, and accessories from luxury brands that practice sustainability—along with a few collections created exclusively for the new retail vertical.
Net Sustain launched with 26 brands and more than 500 products that meet a criteria set forth by the retailer: At least 50% of every brand’s products have to be manufactured within its own community or country; brands have to show that they reduce waste in their production and packaging and that they adhere to fair trade principles and invest in communities; and that they have a considered approach to sourcing materials and ingredients that “takes into account the welfare of people, animals, and the environment.”
Jewelry brands Catbird, Leigh Miller, Laura Lombardi, and Melissa Joy Manning all have pieces in Net Sustain’s rollout. And two jewelry brands—Wwake and Chopard—were asked to create a special collections exclusively for Net Sustain.
Wwake’s collection for the retailer, simply called Pearls, uses pearls sustainably sourced from the American Pearl Company, the only operating pearl farm in the U.S. (pearls are grown in the Tennessee River).
Each style pairs freshwater pearls of all shapes and sizes with the brand’s signature opals—to stunning results. “These are some pretty fancy pieces,” brand founder and designer Wing Yau tells JCK with a laugh. ‘The price points [$420–$5,600] are definitely higher than those in my core collection.”
Yau adds that opals and pearls are now so popular with millennials, she no longer sees them as trends, but as gems that are here to stay.
“Pearls are super magical,” she adds. “But from a design standpoint, it was challenging. The [foundation] of our brand is that we’re able to deliver fresh designs. And pearls have been done in so many ways. So we did our take on the pearl.”
She drew inspiration for the designs, which also feature white diamonds and recycled gold, from the colors of the sea and sky “and that place where they meet on the horizon and meld together.” She notes, “I wanted the opals and pearls to speak to each other at that point on the horizon.”
One of Yau’s favorite styles—already sold out on the site, but featured at the top of this article—puts Wwake’s wildly popular opal studs into a larger earring composed of a piece of shell boasting a blister pearl (on the flip side are sapphires sourced from a community-conscious mine in Malawi). She’s also excited about a pair of hoop earrings paved in diamonds, which she calls “functional, but also super glitzy.”
The designer, who’s famous for creating small-scale jewelry that’s both trendy and timeless, adds, “For me, it’s all about the materials. And everything has to be a little new, but also familiar in some way” (which also happens to be a perfect distillation of Yau’s aesthetics and design style).
Wwake created a total of nine styles for the collection, which Net-a-Porter is dropping in three batches—two of which are already live.
Top: Wwake’s earrings-within-earrings (the opal studs detach) for Net Sustain
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