It takes three security checks to get into a room that holds a billion dollars in jewels. Badge, photo ID, badge again. And then, there you are: a high-security vault, except it is more than eighty thousand square feet, with twenty-eight-foot ceilings.
This was the exhibition space inside the Wynn Las Vegas, which every year hosts two of the jewelry trade’s biggest events. The first thing that hits you is the scale. It’s room after huge room full of dealers and connoisseurs.
Everyone in the crowd is dressed basically one of two ways: for dealing (casual, so the jewelry does the talking) or for showing off (the dandies wearing their best pieces). The wide aisles keep everything visible. The lighting is unreal, built to maximize the appeal of precious metals and dazzling stones.
Though adjacent, the two shows are very different animals. Couture is the trade show for jewelry makers and manufacturers of every stripe, where dealers come from around the world to see what’s new and place orders. The Las Vegas Antique Jewelry & Watch Show is where the finest vintage and antique pieces find their way into the cases of the dealers who cater to collectors.
At the antique show there’s so much product it’s disorienting: gems in every color and shape and size, ancient coins, natural pearls, every metal you can think of, pieces you could hang on a wrist or a shoulder or pin to an ear or a lapel. Both shows are for the trade only; members of the public are not allowed. But a few years ago, a dealer got me in, and I’ve been going to both ever since.
They always run at the same time, and they’re the best places to see the cutting edge of what will show up in the top personal collections in coming years—and, after that, what will become part of the personal style of guys across the country. There was a time when most of this stuff would have been off-limits for a man. For way too long, the rules of men’s jewelry didn’t allow for much beyond diamonds and gold, silver, or maybe another metal.
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