Whenever the word “Monaco” comes up in conversation, people think of the Grand Prix, Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, gambling, and James Bond. The name drips glamor. To attach the word “Monaco” to the name of a business is to borrow its intrinsic glamor but also to take a risk. The business has to live up to the word’s associations.
Take APM Monaco, which owes its name to the fact it was founded in Monaco, based its business plan on the production of jewelry that borrowed from high-end elegance while bringing prices in line with what most fashion-conscious women -- and men -- could afford. This might have been a radical idea when it was conceived by Ariane Prette and her son Phillipe, but it’s radical no longer. Their company has been operating for forty years and now boasts four hundred retail stores exclusively devoted to its product. During this time, it’s become a go-to company for everyday wear as well as for jewelry to flaunt on special occasions.
A tour through APM’s product lines themselves might start with their Morse Code Ring featuring the word “LOVE” embellished on it in Morse Code. From there it might go to the silver collection, featuring the Meteorites line of necklaces, earrings, and more, or to the romantic Eternelle Heart Ring or the Pink Nacre Heart Necklace, both perfect for expressing how you feel about her.
This month, APM Monaco is expanding its highly popular Yummy Collection, a line of gummy bear-styled jewels that can be mixed and matched in bracelets or necklaces or used on their own as brooches. A perennial favorite, the Yummy Bear combines a light-hearted approach to jewelry-wearing with an aesthetic and attention to design detail that makes it a prized possession in anyone's jewelry collection. If there’s one piece that embodies the disruptive yet aesthetically serious approach taken by APM to contemporary jewelry, this is it.
To promote and showcase their products, their brand new, cutting-edge Collection Rock for example, APM stages extravaganzas, where celebrities, in this case, Yuyu Zhangzou and Baptiste Giabiconi, dance through Paris’s Galerie Lafayette decked out in some of the lines most fetching chain necklaces and bracelets. Just before Collection Rock’s debut, the company threw a Christmas party at the Plaza Athenee, attended, among others, by Just Riadh, Daniela and Nico Capone, Richard Orlinski, and face of the brand, Baptiste Giabiconi. Like its jewelry, the company itself has become a force in the social whirl.
The success of APM’s initial business plan is now more than established in the ever-widening presence of its products in the marketplace as well as in the wardrobes of celebrities who wear and endorse them. What impresses us just as much, however, is how APM took a name, “Monaco,” associated with the highest of glamor and high fashion and democratized it, producing lines of affordable, and fun, jewelry that will make the woman and men who wear it feel as though they've entered the world of high fashion.
To see examples, have a look at the company’s website, APM.mc. And keep an eye out for what’s coming down the pike, since APM Monaco never stops creating and innovating in this enormous, exponentially expanding market.
