These diamonds are forever
IT WAS the sort of email you never forget. Could Helena Fine fly from London to Chicago, at two days’ notice, to show a new client four different ten-carat diamonds. With a six-month-old baby in tow, it wasn’t an easy decision. But then it isn’t every day that you get asked to make an engagement ring for Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster.
“The first question they asked me, Fine recalls, was, “Are your stones ethical?”
The celebrity couple had got engaged at the Eiffel Tower, so Fine’s design used lattice work to echo the iconic building.
Many of the clients for her bespoke work are couples who have just got engaged, and demand a similarly personal touch. For example, the clients who brought in two rings, originally belonging to their grandmothers. The diamonds and gold were fused together to create a more modern engagement ring. “This way they think about them every day.”
For the divorcee who brought in her engagement, eternity and wedding rings, the story was different, as was the solution. “She wanted to use what she had to create a bold new start in her life.” The result: an impressive cocktail ring.
Fine got into the jewellery business in 1998, quite by chance. After moving from Manchester to London she replied to a JC advert for a PA to a diamond merchant. She got the job and for the next few years learnt every aspect of the trade on the job, from conveying parcels of diamonds to Bond Street jewellers, to taking single stones to the craftsman for design.
Eventually, when her friends were getting engaged, she set up on her own at home, working with diamond merchants, setters and craftsmen to create engagement rings at half the retail price.
During the last recession she took a break from the business to train as a nursery teacher, and worked at Woodside Park Synagogue nursery for three years. But when, four years ago, she took a call from a potential client, asking if she was still dealing in diamond rings, it reawakened her enthusiasm.
I want my jewellery to absolutely shine