On Tuesday, London-based lab-grown diamond brand Astrea named Sarah Jessica Parker as its global creative director. The “Sex and the City” star has also invested in the brand.
In the role, Parker will work with Astrea’s design team to create pieces for the brand — the first include a pair of chandelier earrings, a moi-and-toi ring featuring pear and emerald stones and a long diamond necklace. She will serve as a joint spokesperson alongside Nathalie Morrison, Astrea’s founder and chief executive. As part of the partnership, Parker has also become a shareholder in the company, holding an undisclosed stake.
In fashion, Parker’s endorsement carries more weight than the average celebrity. Not only does she have a long history as a fashion icon both on-screen and off, she also has hands-on experience in the business, operating her SJP shoe line for over a decade before shuttering it last year. While countless celebrities have endorsed mined diamonds or jewellery made from them, she’s one of relatively few to lend their name to lab-grown stones.
Parker told The Business of Fashion she was excited to come on board with a brand that is still relatively new to the market — the company only just launched in 2023 — so she could be a part of building the line from the ground up.
“There’s a different feeling of investment when you feel like a partner,” said Parker. “I don’t enter it casually, I ask as many questions as I can. I try to make really good choices about what I can actually offer or contribute.”
She’s hoping she can help in teaching consumers about lab-grown stones in the same way Morrison, whom she first connected with after Morrison reached out to her agent, did for her. Before the two met, she was relatively unfamiliar with lab-grown diamonds. A quick conversation, she said, had her rethinking what she thought she knew about the product.
“If you spend 30 minutes … a sort of cursory look at what the [lab-grown diamond] business is, it’s very exciting,” said Parker, adding that the possibilities with different coloured and shaped stones is a particular point of interest for her.
Her buy-in will help Astrea to stand out in what’s becoming an increasingly crowded market. The past few years have seen countless brands get into lab-grown stones, from jewellery giants like Pandora to quickly-growing upstarts like Dorsey.
Besides its celebrity partner, Astrea’s point of differentiation is its focus on producing only top quality diamonds, at high-level clarity, unique cuts that are difficult to achieve with mined stones and D and E-rated colour, or the clearest on the diamond colour rating scale.
“Diamonds are not rare, however, very high end quality diamonds are,” said Morrison.
By contrast, most lab-grown diamond jewellery brands pitch consumers on making the stones more accessible to the average consumer. Astrea’s price points are high — a one carat diamond solitaire necklace from Astrea costs $3,299, compared to $1,850 for the same size at Pandora.
Beyond the stones themselves, the partnership with Parker, Morrison said, is a major component of the brand’s elevation strategy. So is creating pieces that can be worn in multiple ways — a necklace that can be refashioned into a pair of earrings for instance. Storytelling, too, will play a role in convincing consumers that their products are worth the price tag, explaining the production and manufacturing processes.
“We embrace the past, the beauty and the love behind the diamonds, but we now can do it in a scientific way, better quality, more traceable and better for our planet,” said Morrison. “That’s the real message, beyond the business.”
