Italian Jewelry Designers

Those who can afford the creations fashioned by Italian jewelry designers are generally familiar with the names of those same designers. They recognize the fine work of those designers. They spend their money in shops that would never carry any sort of fake jewelry. They can feel confident that each jewel they wear reflects the actual input of the Italian jewelry designers. Not everyone is so lucky. That fact thus explains the proliferation of pirated jewelry. Modern-day pirates do not devote time to digging up a buried treasure. Present-day pirates simply pay others for a clever copy of a well-crafted and valuable fashion accessory.



In early 2003, two Italian Jewelry designers, Stefan Hafner and Rand Rahm, created a special jeweled dress. Put on display just before the 75th Annual Academy Awards, that dress was worth millions of dollars. The dress obtained its amazing sparkle from the many diamonds covering the dress fabric.



Those same two Italian jewelry designers joined forces with more than ten other Italian jewelry designers. That group of skilled and fashion-conscious Italians decided to hold an auction. They indicated that the proceeds from the auction would go to a children’s charity.

The diamond-covered dress was supposed to be one of the items auctioned-off at that charity event. The jewelry designers hoped that they could catch a large number of potential bidders by scheduling the auction for the six days prior to the actual Oscar ceremony. The designers anticipated receiving bids from celebrities who would be going to that very ceremony.


On the night of that ceremony, the auction-goers arrived in impressive and expensive cars. No member of the bidding audience chose to use the available mass transport vehicles. No auctioneers, no bidders and no Italian jewelry designers knew on that night that some of the auctioned jewels could later have a plausible connection to the L.A. Metro system.

In early 2008, members of the Los Angeles Police Department found a large stash of jewels at a Cal-Trans right-of-way. That Cal-Trans right-of-way, a part of the Metro system, was located in Granada Hills. Those sparsely covered Hills had been hiding a plastic pipe. A jewelry thief had put his buried treasure in that pipe.



The same thief had since become an inmate in an L.A. jail. As part of a plea bargain, he had agreed to show members of the LAPD where he had hidden his loot. He then took the selected group to the little-noticed spot in the Granada Hills. After the LAPD had dug out the plastic pipe, and had examined its contents, members of the local news media captured footage of a few choice jewels.



That footage displayed a scene that seemed a far cry from the normal working environment for any Italian jewelry designer. It showed jewelry strewn on a table, with a dark and dirty plastic pipe lying on the same table. That display held little resemblance to the luxurious setting of the 2003 charity auction.



Anyone who had been to that auction, and who then saw the TV footage of the unearthed jewels, had good reason to wonder how many of the auctioned items might have ended up buried in the hills of Los Angeles. Perhaps L.A residents, at least those who now have valuable jewels, have felt compelled to search for a better way to lock-up their jewels.