Like me, I suspect, you’re interested in the winners of AGTA’s Spectrum Awards, yet equally curious about design directions at this prestigious annual competition. After all, many pieces are entered into Spectrum (from established and emerging jewelers) and, in this 32nd edition of the contest, there were 492 entries.
Lorraine DePasque
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Contributing writer for INSTORE and INDESIGN.
L
ike me, I suspect, you’re interested in the winners of AGTA’s Spectrum Awards, yet equally curious about design directions at this prestigious annual competition. After all, many pieces are entered into Spectrum (from established and emerging jewelers) and, in this 32nd edition of the contest, there were 492 entries.
Given that number—among the largest ever, according to Douglas Hucker, AGTA’s CEO–I spent hours on Monday at the Media Preview that followed the day after judging. As you might expect, certain trends became clear to me—some rather quickly. Near the top of the list: many green gems. I mean, there were a lot. Without belaboring the point of directional trends, let me briefly put this in perspective. Last year, blues in the colored stone jewelry arena were among the dominant hues. And sometimes with the Spectrum Awards, a certain stone pops up as widespread—in the 2010 competition, moonstones made a striking über-showing over the previous year’s event.
This time, with the greens, I can’t say there was any one prevailing gem in particular—I spotted everything from emerald to prehnite, peridot, fancy sapphire, tourmaline, and others. But another significant move I did notice were the many monochromatic green gem designs—like pairing emeralds with tsavorites, and so on. (Well, tone-on-tone is highly wearable.)
It wasn’t until I got home later and further considered this trend, when I remembered that Green Flash—it’s kind of like peridot—is among the ten colors predicted by the Pantone Color Institute to be a strong shade in women’s fashion next spring. “Green Flash calls on its wearer to explore, push the envelope, and escape the mundane,” Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman said last month, when announcing their forecast.
If Pantone doesn’t mind my borrowing a page from them, that’s also a perfect way to describe entries in AGTA’s annual Spectrum Awards. Well, take a look for yourself, at this small sampling of what I saw this week.
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