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Interview of Donatella Zappieri around Aquamarines - March Birthstone
- heleneerobert
- Mar 8, 2024
- 5 min read
Embarking on a journey into the world of precious stones unveils a realm of fascination and allure that captivates the senses. In an exclusive interview, the esteemed Donatella Zappieri shares her profound connection to blue-shade gems, her birthstone, the mesmerizing aquamarine.
Delving into her illustrious career within the jewelry industry, Donatella's insights shed light on her influential consultancy work, her pivotal role as Professor and Faculty member of various Italian Universities and Geneva-based universities and her deep personal affinity to all jewelry related matters. Through a harmonious blend of astute business acumen and heartfelt passion, Donatella's journey exemplifies a remarkable synergy of success and genuine love for the art of jewelry.
HR: Dear Donatella, please present your professional activities in the jewelry business.
DZ: I'm a jewelry business consultant, and I like to describe my professional life with three different pillars. One, being a consultant, helping brands to develop themselves from a strategic perspective. Second pillar is teaching, being at universities, teaching in Milano (Bocconi, IES Abroad, IULM, RCS Academy), in Geneva at Créa Genève and HEAD, and being able to really nurture the new talents in this interesting industry, which is jewellery, and get them to know and understand which are the best practices and what it means also from a business perspective to work in jewellery. And my third pillar is writing about jewellery, because I'm also a journalist for a few B2B magazines (Huesers and Europa Star).
So in a nutshell, this is me, 360 degree jewellery lover and passionate, being able to work on those different facets in order to nurture myself, but also to nurture other people, the next generation.
HR: March 8th is your birthday which coincides with the aquamarine as your birthstone. Do you have a special connection to the stone?
DZ: If you take the Latin origin of the aquamarine word it relates to water and I have a strong relationship with water. Ihave been a competitive swimmer for 10 years, so I always had this relationship with water. It is very healthy and I think it's also part of being a Pisces, because it's a double, pragmatic, dreamer combination.
HR: Do you believe in the power of stones, the mythology behind all?
DZ: Well, I do, I do. When you think of aquamarine, it is a peaceful, calming stone. And myself, I think, I try always to bring this element into my everyday relationships. I do believe that there is a special magic related to stones. I like more colored stones, and at the same time it's the attraction of colors, the chromatic, that opens up all your senses. So it's the regard, it's the touching, and it's also the vibration that goes with colourful stones.
I do believe that gems have a power !
HR: All of them or just special ones?
DZ : More towards colorful, colored gems. I love the beauty of imperfection. When you approach this world of gems, you can start reading into the inclusions, into the imperfections, and then you can also imagine the magic that's inside. I wouldn't say that they are like a talisman, but somehow the association, there’s an emotional association. For instance, I have a small turquoise ring, which again it's in the blue range, which was given to me by my mother when I was very young. I wear it as kind of a signet ring. Maybe it’s the association with the family, but I wear it when I need extra good luck. Sometimes it's not only the aesthetic of it. - I feel safe with it, protected. Which is also related to the meaning of a piece of jewelry or a stone in a specific moment of your life and the way it has influenced afterwards your actions . I think it's more a meaning that we give to stones, but at the same time, yes, it's a kind of magical element that comes into that. It's more the transmission of a story, of a personal story, than the stone itself having the power to vibrate and lift you up.
HR: You are Professor in many Master programs…What is your approach to teaching to the jewelry professionals of tomorrow? Do you see certain trends that are specific to this generation?
DZ: I use university also as an interesting forum for me to see what's on, what is happening. Looking at the way young people wear jewellery is always super interesting. I have to say that when it comes to CREA, it's more management teaching, but I had the opportunity to teach many years ago at HEAD, and there, it was very interesting because me coming from the business, I always had to struggle between the pragmatical side and the creative side. But I was able every time to spot the winning ones. With them, I could easily see that their creativity was going beyond the pragmatical of marketing, but at the same time it was creating a bond with consumers. Just to give you another example, I was at Vicenza Fair, and I discovered there one of my students and I still remember when he did his thesis with me. He's from Colombia and when he showed me the product for the first time it was a bit “all over the place” in terms of proportions, silhouettes and merchandising. We struggled a lot because I loved the idea, the intuition, but there was something about the shape, the way it worked out, that was not wearable. When I saw him at the fair, he had taken all those instructions into his jewelry collections so starting from his initial inspiration he developed a very wearable and commercial concept.
So this is when you feel that you have brought something interesting to your students and they have developed accordingly.
Now, going back to trends, I love the way young generations associate on one hand with the big brands which become for them like the object of desire, but at the same time, how much they want to do their own research and the way they bring again the wearability to a new level, like earrings that become brooches, necklaces that are worn around the body, piercing. It is so interesting when you think how piercing related more to the tattoo street style and now it is more a fashion statement.
So somehow my classes are a very nice vivarium of applying a new creativity to the way you wear classical jewelry and this is strongly associated to the way they want to live, they want to perform. I love the way they experiment and I saw the development of many of those young designers into very interesting personas.
And you recognise the design, the idea. It's very interesting because these are the ones with whom I fought more, but my fighting was because I could see there was something good to enhance, it was just a matter of finding the right way and format.
HR : Advice for the next generation?
DZ: What worries me a bit is the easy access they have to information without developing their critical point of view. So my advice to new generations, as they are faster than my generation and they have so many tools, so many opportunities , would be to of course to take advantage of that, but learn also to create their own point of view and their critical perspective because with a critical perspective you will always stand out from the crowd and then people will notice you and bet on you because you are brave enough to fight for your ideas and bring something new to the conversation.
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