TORONTO — Just call it a marriage made in hockey heaven.
Designing the first championship ring for the Professional Women’s Hockey League was an unexpected ask. But it “just made sense” for Chau Lui, the co-owner of Paris Jewellers Canada, a luxury brand built on marking celebratory milestones through jewelry.
“My daughters play hockey and love it,” said Lui, who recalls going to games with her family and watching her girls, ages 10 and 13, follow their passions through this sport.
Lui and her daughters are also fans of The Professional Women’s Hockey League, which was founded in 2023 and comprises six teams — three each from the U.S. and Canada — that play in North America.
Yet such enthusiasm still wasn’t enough to seal this deal between the PWHL and the Edmonton-based retailer, which was founded in 1987 by Lui’s Vietnamese-immigrant parents as a small jewelry repair store. Involved in its operation from a young age, that experience and her mother’s go-for-it attitude left indelible marks upon Lui and her sister Trang Wong, the financial officer of their company.
The sisters now oversee a workforce that is 90 percent female, as well as 22 stores across Canada, with their 23rd location set to open in Calgary’s Southcentre Mall in June.
“The PWHL chose Paris Jewellers to partner on the first Walter Cup Champions ring because of its passion to empower and elevate women,” Ali Bologna, senior director, brand and marketing, for the PWHL, said of the multiyear agreement.
Minnesota Frost Paris Jewellers Championship Ring
Courtesy of Paris Jewellers Canada
For the first effort, the two parties focused on honoring PWHL Minnesota, the team that won the Walter Cup in the league’s inaugural season. Bologna was involved in the design process, as were a few league members and key individuals from the Minnesota team’s business and hockey operations staff.
“It took many rounds of revisions to get this right,” Bologna told WWD.
That included months of discussion concerning the ring’s shape, the engraving on it, plus the choice of stones in the final design.
The discussions led to what Lui calls “the largest fitting ring that Paris Jewellers Canada has ever designed.”
Twenty-six player rings were created, in addition to rings that went to coaches and staff. Each inaugural ring features the player’s name and team number, plus the Minnesota team’s colors and fonts from that first season. The design includes purple amethyst as well as 74 diamonds around the ring’s sides — a sum representing the number of goals Minnesota scored during the first season.
The stones surround the names of Minnesota and the Walter Cup.
Minnesota Frost Paris Jewellers Championship Ring
Courtesy of Paris Jewellers Canada
Visible, too, is the date — May 29, 2024 — when the final was played, and 3-0 — a nod to the score of that game. Also visible are the words “Win one game,” which became the team’s playoff motto last season.
“We really wanted to tell a story,” Lui said.
“This was our first time designing a championship ring and it was a special moment. It was tinged with this idea that if you can see it you can be it,” said Lui. “That inspiration was the force that drove everything.”
