São Paulo – Jewels by Brazilian designer Andrea Conti (pictured above) have been sold in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for two years and gained prominence since they were featured at the Arab Fashion Week that took place in the emirate last October. It was the second time the designer was featured in the Arab fashion event.
Fashioned from 18 karat gold and lightly, harmoniously colored gemstones, the pieces adorned the bodies of the models walking on the catwalks of the Arab Fashion Week using clothes by Brazilian designers during the Brazil Noble project.
Conti believes that fashion events such as the Arab Fashion Week promote the brand not only in the country or region but across the world. “It is a wonderful way to showcase our work,” the designer told ANBA. In Dubai, her jewels are sold at AAVVA Fashion studio owned by designer Vincenzo Visciglia, which took them to Arab Fashion Week in the first place.
“When wearing a jewel, we feel prettier, more charming, we feel empowered, and that is not just here in Brazil or Dubai, it’s across the world,” Andrea says when asked about why the Arab women like her pieces. The designer says that she creates jewels that her clients can use to compose different looks with, according to their personalities.
Besides the UAE, Andrea’s jewelry is sold at a showroom in London, UK. In Brazil, the brand is a phenomenon on the internet, and they are sold exclusively online, and is very popular among movie and music stars, who are often seen using pieces by Conti.
The brand is recent, since it was created in 2015, but the connection of the designer with jewelry is lifelong. Conti says that since she was a child, she used to wear her mother’s jewels. “My mother used to show me everything she had since she was a small child. We wore them and went out,” the businesswoman says.
Her penchant for sketching jewels also started when she was a child and continued during her teenage years. “I’ve always been in love for jewels,” Conti says. But her story until she created the brand was quite diverse. Conti studied Marketing, Management, Accounting and Theater – and says she uses all of it in her daily life – and was an entrepreneur in several fields before arriving at jewelry.
Conti used to sketch earrings, rings and other pieces for friends and family until she decided to create her own collection in 2015. “I told my mother: What if nobody likes it, what will I do? She said: Rest assured that I will buy the entire collection. And in the end, there was nothing left for her to buy!” she said. Her jewels are sold across Brazil, and Andrea won last year as Best E-Commerce of the Glamour Generation Award – Women of the Year. “Last year, after breaking into Acre, we reached every Brazilian state plus Distrito Federal,” she says.
The Andrea Conti collection is based on her designs as a child and as teenager, in a palette of colors from that time, but instead of paint, the colors come from the gemstones used. The other collections by the company are also inspired in these colors, the businesswoman said.
The brand has figured in famous magazine covers such as Vogue and has 765,000 followers on Instagram, where Conti herself is a key figure connecting with the consumers. During the pandemic, her sales increased. The company was already prepared to the online world, so, in addition to selling to previous clients, it also attracted consumers who used to go only to physical stores.
Brazil Noble, which took the jewelry designer and other haute couture brands to the Arab Fashion Week, is a project to promote high-end Brazilian fashion in the Middle East. Besides the event during the Week, which was supported by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, it will host other actions to publicize Brazil’s brands. The project is carried out by High Class Corporate Services, AAVVA Fashion, Cia Paulista de Moda and Rejane Silva, who were the ambassador of the event in Dubai.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
