Rose-tinted spectacle: Exploring Tiffany & Co’s new metal

For the first time in its 175-year history glamour-puss jeweller Tiffany & Co has created an entirely new precious metal. Really? asks Anna Burnside

IT IS serendipty. The Chancellor awards millionaires a 5p tax cut and Tiffany & Co, the go-to jewellers for repentant adulterers, unimaginative-but-loaded gift-buyers and girlies with aspirations launches a new metal. Meet Rubedo, an alloy of silver, gold and copper with a golden-pink sheen. It emulates, according to the company’s slightly hysterical website, “the rose luminescence of a sunrise”.

“Capturing the light of dawn”, another of Rubedo’s alleged achievements, does not come cheap. The new metal is being used in a range of jewellery to mark Tiffany’s 175th anniversary. These cuffs, rings and pendants have everything the company’s core customer loves, being heavily branded with the legends T & Co, 1837, and founder Charles Lewis Tiffany’s signature. These legends are on the outside, so that everyone knows it’s from Tiffany’s not Argos. These pieces are only available this year, so have a desirable collectability for the brand’s hardcore devotees. They come in the iconic pale blue box and are boldy priced: £5,800 for the cuff, £6,500 for the interlocking circles necklace, £505 for a padlock on a chain.

The spiralling cost of bullion grade metals is, according to industry insiders, one of the major reasons for Tiffany’s development of Rubedo. The new alloy is trademarked and its exact proportions of gold, silver and copper are as closely guarded as the recipe for Irn-Bru. The name is the Latin word for redness, adopted by alchemists for the fourth and final stage in their attempt to create their magnum opus. Which is a highly polished way of disguising a driving commercial need to come up with a premium metal which costs less than either straightforward gold, silver or platinum.

Jewellery commentator Brian Roemmelle says: “The rise in the price of gold and silver was causing a price increase that raised the retail cost to almost become out of reach for a wide section of traditional Tiffany customers.” This is borne out by the company’s results, which report a drop-off in sales under $250. “Rubedo is sort of an alchemical marriage of a uniquely beautiful new metal alloy paired with a way to keep retail costs lower then equivalent pieces in gold or silver, says Roemmelle. “Ironically, Rubedo just may become more prized and valuable than the constituent metals that it contains. Rubedo’s content is arranged so uniquely, it will be very difficult for other companies to copy the product’s unique characteristics.”

From a technical point of view, Rubedo has much to commend it. It is more durable than silver and polishes up to a high sheen. It shimmers in the light, with distinctive gold, pink, amber, silver and copper tones. Conveniently, rosy-hued precious metals are also having a fashion moment. David Beckham, who scours the world for new and inventive things to spend his money on, bought Victoria a rose gold Rolex Daytona for her 36th birthday. She has gone nuts for the stuff. She has sent models down the catwalk in futuristic rose gold-coloured shoes and added a pair of rose-gold-dipped aviator sunglasses to her accessories range. She even owns a rose-gold-edged iPhone. So can you, if you give $1,334.99 to goldgenie.com.

Mrs Beckham, who could dip the kids’ chicken nuggets in rose gold if she so desired, will probably not wear Rubedo. Why choose an alloy when there is a rarer, purer commodity available? The wider fashion community, however, has welcomed the new metal. This is hardly surprising given that Tiffany is a hefty purchaser of advertising space in the world’s glossy magazines and has carefully courted influential bloggers and other opinion-formers who might otherwise turn up their noses at a brand enthusiastically adopted by arrivistes.

Will their purple prose translate into cold hard profits? Tiffany clearly thinks so, and it has not survived 175 years without considerable commercial smarts. Charles Lewis Tiffany and his partner Teddy Young began selling stationery and fancy goods in lower Manhattan in 1837. When Tiffany took over, in 1853, necklaces took over from notebooks. He patented the famous blue packaging, pioneered the use of silver and introduced the English Sterling Silver Standard which is still in use in the US today. The company supplied the army with medals and swords and made china for the White House. In 1978, cosmetics giant Avon bought the company. An investor group bought them out in 1984, and Tiffany went public three years later.

The store, a New York landmark and symbol of aspiration since Truman Capote wrote Breakfast At Tiffany’s in 1958, was always associated with diamonds, engagement rings and grown-up jewellery. Then, at the start of the 1990s, responding to recession in the US, they turned to the mass market. The company’s masterstroke was to keep the flagship properties, the distinctive luxe packaging and the sparklers in the window while introducing entry level pieces which traded on the company’s history and reputation.

Roemmelle says: “Tiffany can be identified by just a colour. It was a genius move to associate the Tiffany blue box and bag to the process of revealing what is surely an iconic piece of jewellery.” He quotes the New York Sun from 1906: “Tiffany has one thing in stock that you cannot buy from him for as much money as you may offer; he will only give it to you. And that is one of his boxes. The rule of the establishment is ironclad – never to allow a box bearing the name of the firm to be taken out of the building except with an article which has been sold by them and for which they are responsible.”

Today Tiffany’s silver padlocks, keys and dog tags, some bearing the legend “Please Return To Tiffany & Co”, mean that everyone with £100 can buy into the Audrey Hepburn romance and take home a little bit of the brand in a rinky-dink carrier. The developing economies’ insatiable demand for status symbols means there are whole new territories out there desperate to own a turquoise pouch full of magic. The company may have had a poor last quarter of 2011, but overall, profits are up and confidence is strong enough to launch Rubedo on a sea of colour-coordinated Bollinger.

The new metal will, Tiffany hopes, give its pocket money shoppers a fresh alternative at an agreeable price point. The company plans to open 24 new stores in 2012. Who knew there were so many people desperate for a padlock that evokes the rose luminescence of a sunrise to hang around their necks?