Vera Wang Launches “Vow” at Jared Jewelers

While best known for her elegant bridal dresses and her 56 years in fashion, Vera Wang also has a long history in jewelry design, which on Thursday enters a new chapter with the launch of a collection called “Vow,” available only at Jared Jewelers.

The Vera Wang Vow collection consists of engagement and anniversary rings and wedding bands designed with diamonds set in 14-karat gold. The jewelry pieces, priced from $900 to $8,800, are sleek, minimal, with a sophisticated 1940s and ’50s look of luxury, reflecting Wang’s design ethos. Among the items are a mined diamond bridal ring, priced at $8,800, and a mined diamond anniversary ring, priced at $1,200. The collection will be sold at all Jared stores and on the Jared website.

The launch of the Vow collection reflects an expansion of Wang’s business at Jared, the high-end, accessible luxury banner of parent company Signet Jewelers. Last December, Wang launched a line for Jared Atelier, a format showcasing guest designers creating limited-edition, high jewelry collections. Pre-owned Vera Wang jewelry is sold at Jared as well.

Wang also has a collection at Signet’s Zales division, which sells fine jewelry at lower prices than Jared. Aside from Vera Wang, Jared’s list of designer brands sold at the store includes 1933 by Esquire Men’s, Charm’d by Lulu Frost, Crivelli, Kallat, Le Vian, Pnina Tornai, Shy Creation, Yoko London and Zydo Italy.

With Vow, “We really wanted to bring a line to Jared that’s higher-priced than what we did at Zales, to reach a different audience,” Wang told WWD. “I love working in every category, but in particular, designing Vow gave me a chance to really explore more techniques and scale of diamonds, because the price point was higher.

“For the moment there are 38 styles, but I’m sure there’s more coming because we have been working on Vow for about a year,” Wang said.

“Vera Wang is an icon in the bridal category,” said Claudia Cividino, president of Jared Jewelers. “This new Vow collection is a testament to her vision and mastery of design.” It also “carries through the artistry of her high jewelry Atelier collection into a bridal offering that our clients will cherish,” Cividino said.

The pieces in Vow are designed “intentionally” to be worn separately or “stacked” together, Wang said. “I see the girls today — maybe they are encouraged to — wearing their engagement rings with more of their personal jewelry collection, and why shouldn’t they? And why shouldn’t they wear their other jewelry with their wedding band? So this idea is not new. It was there in the ’70s, but it disappeared for some 50 years. So now it seems to be a real trend again.

“I really wanted the engagement ring, of course, to sit on its own, but then when you click in the wedding band, there’s this fit. They were designed in the same theme.”

The Vow collection includes mined and lab-grown diamonds. “We can service a client that wants lab-grown and therefore scale. And we also can service clients that want mined diamonds, which many young people are very attached to.…For a long time it’s been lab-grown, as a growing trend. But certainly now there seems to be more of a balance in demand between lab and mined diamonds,” Wang suggested. “They are two very different clients, in my opinion. I mean, I’m not a full-time jeweler, but in my opinion, both seem valid for the moment.”

In 1989, Vera Wang designed her own bridal dress, and launched her bridal line with her own salon at New York’s The Carlyle hotel in 1990. Back then, “I was doing dresses that were extremely minimal and very architectural, and that’s really at the core of how I think of myself. That’s really who I am,” Wang said. “But on the other hand, as a designer, I also feel we evolved through another period, certainly in the Nineties, into the 2000s and onwards, where we were very artisanal as a [fashion] house. It will be 56 years this year in fashion for me. So I know the pendulum swings, and now I’ve seen a return to this very architectural, pure, quiet luxury, if you want to call it that, which applies to wedding gowns,” and notably those she designs for Pronovias, the Spanish bridal retailer, where her bridal designs “parallels” her Vow jewelry for Jared.

“But I’ve really seen a return to that in the last three years. and this line at Jared really enabled me to leave the more Baroque bridal pieces that we have designed and explore what’s more modern, architectural, things I personally relate to. That was the wonderful part about this collaboration with Jared. You see changes in trends, not only in our wedding gowns, but also in wedding jewelry.”

At times last year, Wang was simultaneously working on her Jared Atelier line, which she explained “is really fashion, and has nothing to do with bridal,” and Vow. Her Jared Atelier assortment contains 15 pieces including those in diamond pieces at up to $125,000, Wang said.

“With everything I do, I am highly involved, probably to everyone’s annoyance,” Wang said. “Nonetheless, I really do try to make sure that I am very careful about anything we design.”