Digging Deep
Last month he gave us the lowdown on how he got started in Lazare. Now we continue our excavation into the mind of Charles Rosario, senior vice president of Lazare Kaplan International as he tells us about his 44 years steering the diamond brand and what Lazare stands for, in this exclusive interview organised by Degem
What’s the most important thing to know when it comes to buying diamonds?
The most important thing in buying a diamond is confidence and trust in who you’re buying from. The jeweller who answers your questions and provides you the information, who doesn’t just want to sell you something, that’s the guy you want to talk to and buy your diamond from. I’ve been with Lazare for 44 years—when Maurice and Leon Tempelsman took over the company in 1984—and one of the things that they said to us was that the most important thing that we have is the name on the door and everything it stands for. The most important advice I can give to anyone is to ask questions, listen and pay attention when you don’t get an answer. The people that give you the information have nothing to hide. The company’s close to being over a 100 years old, but since 1919 we’ve been producing the Lazare ideal cut. It’s the same angles and proportions, basic math and science and it’s been proven to be the world’s most beautiful diamond. That’s why Mr Lazare Kaplan dedicated his company to only produce the world’s most beautiful diamonds. He stopped producing everything else and that’s what put us on the map—we’ve been ahead with the ideal cut since then. Everything we do is geared towards maximising the beauty; whether it’s the actual cut of the diamond, all the diamonds regardless of size have the same angles and proportions because it is a mathematical formula. That is why it’s easier to talk about the Lazare diamond, because we’ve eliminated one concern about one of the Cs. I’ve done just about every job you could do in this business. I’ve polished diamonds, I oversaw the quality control for the factories in Puerto