2023-12-18 18:00:00
Courbet’s ambition is not small and did not fail to cause the institutional houses of Place Vendôme to erupt: “to reconcile the beautiful and the good” with jewelry made of synthetic diamonds and recycled gold from telephones, computers and other IT equipment. By naming the brand he co-founded in 2018 after the Communard painter involved in the unbolting of the Vendôme column, Manuel Mallen, boss of Courbet, clearly announced the color.
Five years after its launch, this fine connoisseur of the jewelry sector (who notably managed, in France, Piaget, Baume & Mercier and Poiray) seems to have opened the way for these controversial cultured diamonds. The company, which notably counts Chanel among its investors, focuses on the ethical and sustainable dimension of materials as well as on the democratization of colored diamonds, too rare to be processed outside of unique pieces of high jewelry. Encounter.
Point : What differentiates a laboratory diamond from a natural diamond?
Manuel Mallen: First of all, a lab-grown diamond is a diamond. As in nature, it is a crystallized form of carbon, and is therefore a pure body. Unlike a mined diamond, a laboratory diamond is not grown in nature, but by human hands using very high-tech processes. To be born, this diamond, and the carbon atoms that compose it, were subjected to the same temperature and pressure conditions as under the earth (for the HPHT method) or in space (for the CVD method). Even the best gemologist in the world cannot distinguish a mined diamond from a laboratory diamond: which proves that we are indeed facing a stone that is just as exceptional from an aesthetic, chemical and optical point of view.
Beyond its origin, we can also distinguish one from the other by their atomic construction (the carbon atoms are not arranged in the same way), but this in no way affects the final rendering of the rock. To give a slightly barbaric, but very telling image, it’s like comparing a baby and a test-tube baby.
How long have they been around and why are jewelry apps so new?
For more than seventy years, we have known how to make diamond dust for technological applications, the difficulty is to grow large and beautiful diamonds, and we have only mastered this for a few years, with uncertainty about the final result.
Do you sense a shift in the market and increased interest?
Yes, it’s obvious. In the United States, the market for lab-grown diamonds for engagement rings has overtaken that of mined diamonds…
Why does the terminology used in France not seem satisfactory to you?
The terminology “synthetic diamond” or “synthetic diamond” that we are forced to use is false: there is no synthesis in the manufacture of a diamond. We lie to the end customer and make him believe that it is not a diamond, even though it is a real diamond. We obviously want a name different from mined diamond, but one that is just like the international name “laboratory-created diamond” (lab grown diamond). This situation suits the lobbies who want to maintain this doubt in the customer’s mind.
How can we explain this national severity?
The power of lobbies is obvious. I could ultimately understand it if we had mines on French territory, but that is not the case. On the contrary, in France, we are trying to produce diamonds in the laboratory (Diam Concept, the first French company to create diamonds) and people are putting obstacles in our way.
Have legal steps been taken?
Yes, but it is long, complicated and expensive and on the other hand, we have financial powers that are out of all proportion to our capabilities…
Why do you say that synthetic diamonds are more ethical and more ecological?
One thing is certain, the people who produce diamonds in the laboratory have normal working conditions and treatments…. At Courbet, we buy mainly in the United States because the energy is much more carbon-free than in other producing countries, but the ideal would be to source in France. This is why we work in close collaboration with Diam Concept.
What did you think of the recent “Diamonds Facts” report produced by the Natural Diamond Council?
I admit that I no longer really pay much attention to this type of very controversial, and especially incriminating, study! To give you an idea, they compared the energy it takes to produce a 1 carat diamond in the laboratory and the energy it takes to find 1 carat of diamond in a mine. If you reread this sentence carefully, you will see that we are comparing two different things: a 1 carat diamond is a single stone, 1 carat of diamond can be 100 stones of 0.01 carat which make up total 1 carat.
Where are lab-grown diamonds made? China, India and Israel seem to have a head start…
Yes, it is the historical producers of industrial diamonds who have developed their offer, but the United States also has producers, and then Europe seems to have some projects in this direction…
Can Europe, and particularly France, become a stronghold for laboratory diamonds?
It will depend on the brands’ ability to capture this market. We did it five years ago with Courbet, Place Vendôme. Either way, I think the customer mentality is changing more and more quickly. And the younger generations will impose this choice on brands, because it respects their ecological and ethical commitments and their desire for transparency.
How are lab-grown diamond prices set?
Initially, they were based on the diamond mine. But today, we are moving away from this comparison, there is for example much less exponential effect of the price according to the carat on laboratory diamonds.
The possibility of producing on demand is worrying. Should we fear for the rarity of diamonds?
The rarity of diamonds is a vast subject: billions of carats have been extracted from mines for more than two hundred years. Unlike mined diamonds, lab-grown diamonds are a demand market. If there is demand from the public and brands, production will increase. If this is not the case, producers will create diamond for industry or for high technology, because the applications of laboratory diamond for new technologies seem endless.
How do you see the two markets coexisting?
As in the automobile industry with electric or hydrogen cars, and those with fossil fuels, starting from specialized brands (Tesla style) then traditional brands create models. It is the consumer who will decide the trends.
How do you exploit, at Courbet, the new creative possibilities offered by these laboratory diamonds?
We can play with shapes more easily than the mine diamond, but also with colors because we can recreate, as in nature, the colors of certain diamonds (yellow, blue, orange, green, pink), without forget these designs that are almost impossible to find in mine diamonds.
What is Courbet’s ambition?
Reconciling Beauty and Good.
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