FASHION
LOUIS VUITTON’S SPARKLING DIAMOND
JANUARY 21, 2020
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WORDS
by KRISTOPHER FRASER
PHOTOS
COURTESY of LOUIS VUITTON
Louis Vuitton is partnering with Lucara Diamond Corporation and the HB Company of Antwerp in a unique collaboration to transform a rare and exceptional diamond specimen, a 1758 carat diamond, the second largest rough diamond ever discovered.
April 19, 2019 was the history making day that the diamond named the Sewelô, meaning Rare Find in the Setswana language, was recovered at the Lucara Diamond Corp.’s 100% owned Karowe mine, Botswana. It is the largest diamond to ever come out of Botswana.
The diamond is roughly the size of a tennis ball at 83 mm x 62 mm x 46 mm, weighing 352 grams. The only diamond on record ever found larger than the Sewelô is the Cullian, at 3106 carats discovered in South Africa in 1905, and fashioned into historic diamonds that are now in the British Crown Jewels and royal collection. The Sewelô managed to remain unbroken thanks to the Lucara’s high-tech XRT circuit, a highly advanced recovery process that avoids crushing the diamond-bearing rock, a drawback of previous processes. Initial analysis of the Sewelô characterizes the stone as ‘near gem quality’, while detailed studies of the stone, its composition, qualities and potential will continue for several months.
The Sewelô is spectacular not only for its immense size but also for its intriguing characteristics of shape, color, formation and composition. The rough crystal is largely covered in a very thin layer of black carbon, enveloping yet hinting at the 2 billion-year-old secrets hidden within; the full extent of variations in color and clarity of the diamond yield is still unknown. This was exactly the kind of extreme rarity, unconventional and challenging, to appeal to Louis Vuitton’s sense of adventure and creativity.
Louis Vuitton is working closely with master diamond cutters, HB Company, studying the Sewelô in minute detail, using the very latest scanning and imaging technology to assess the final potential of the stone, and plan the optimum yield of individual finished, cut and polished diamonds. The first step is to open a window onto the stone, in order to gain visibility into the heart of the Sewelô, and plot various permutations of size, color and shape. Cutting this particular diamond is estimated to take a year to complete.
