Meeting Jewelry Designer: Roberto Coin
The end of my summer travels brought me to an amazing little town called Vincenza. This is home to Italian jewelry designer, Roberto Coin. I have been in love with the tiny treasures collection for years, and a little fact is you can only buy tiny treasures in the U.S. market, as they were specifically designed with the American girl in mind. No wonder I like them so much! My favorite is my dainty “M” white gold necklace. I also got the small cross in white gold for Easter last year, when I found out I had been accepted to serve on the leadership team with RUF.
All of my Roberto Coin has been purchased at a jeweler in Naples, whom my parents have become close to over the years. She is always very willing to track down any piece we have seen, if they don’t have it in store. Our jeweler found out about my summer plans when I was visiting for Easter weekend and picking out the cross necklace I mentioned above. She was ecstatic to hear of my opportunity to study in Milan and was the one who suggested that my mom should come back at the end of my program for some excursions. She said she would reach out to the Roberto Coin factory and see if we could get a guided tour. But boy, she delivered much more than my mom and I were anticipating.
Upon arriving at the train station in Vincenza, we were picked up by Colleen, the right hand of Mr. Coin. She has been with the company since the beginning. She took us on a drive around the town, and onto the factory. As we were only anticipating the factory tour, you can imagine our disarray when she said Mr. Coin may have time in his schedule to meet us. Anyway, this seemed too good to be true, so we went about our business learning everything there was to know about the intricate process of jewelry making. We galavanted through the factory, passing trays of diamonds as far as the eye could see. After the factory fun was over, Colleen took us to coffee for a mid morning break, an Italian norm I miss dearly. During coffee, she received a call from Mr. Coin that he wanted to meet us and to bring us over straight away. You would’ve thought my mom and I were royalty to receive this kind of treatment.
We were buzzed into the headquarters, just across the street from the coffee shop. We gazed the showroom on the ground floor until we headed up to the waiting room outside of Mr. Coin’s office. He came out and greeted us like we were old friends. He then led us into his office and asked our thoughts of his factory, our travels around Italy, my school program, his love for interior design, the home he designed in Venice and shared some of his in process designs. We watched the “Legends of the Ruby” interview he had filmed and his reasoning behind adding a small ruby on every piece he creates. He also pulled a book from his shelf, his Animal Collection book, and signed it to my mom and I. He asked what we were doing for lunch and insisted that we go dine with Colleen, as he couldn’t come with us but wanted to send us out. We had a delicious meal and he requested that we return back to his office for a chance to look at their inventory and try some pieces on. This is when we met his lovely wife and learned more about their home in Venice. After playing dress up in the jewels, we proceeded to go back upstairs where Mr. Coin could say goodbye to us.
This was such an influential experience to learn about Mr. Coin’s original background in hospitality and how he chased after his dream of designing. This taught me that you can never be too old to reach your dream, he founded his company in 1996 when he was 51 years old. Within 5 years, Roberto Coin was the number one jewelry designer in the world. Thank you Mr. Coin for your inspiration.
Mr. Coin’s “Legends of the Ruby” interview found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NtGDPA-HOE
XOXO,
Kenzie Rae
