Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.

This week’s guest is fine jewelry designer Lucy Delius. Before launching her business in 2022, Lucy worked in the jewelry industry on the PR side. It helped hone her understanding of the customer in what is a pretty stressful time for luxury. The prices of gold and silver have been rising for months, and Lucy checks them religiously.

Lucy launched a collection of black pearl jewelry last week. I called her up to talk about necklaces and instead found a treasure trove of business tips for aspiring luxury entrepreneurs. Enjoy.

Hi Lucy, what’s the scoop?

I am in New York at the moment, launching our newest collection called Nyx. It’s based on black baroque pearls. It’s actually the first time we’ve ever worked in pearls.

You’re London-based. Why are you launching in New York?

We’ve got a great client base here. I come to New York a couple of times a year, and we do trunk shows. We also come to LA once a year. And then we sometimes work with external hosts as well — usually existing clients who are well-connected in places where we don’t have a foothold, like Charleston or Miami.

Trunk shows aren’t a new concept, but I feel more and more people are doing them. Is that right?

Trunk shows are a hot selling tool for me and for lots of other brands at the moment. We’ll often book a hotel suite and hold private appointments. It’s a really nice way to meet people. We opened a store in London back in October, but when you don’t have the retail space, they are incredibly helpful. We have a very strong wholesale presence, and I often do personal appearances in-store, which also works great because people love meeting the designer behind a product. But trunk shows are even more intimate.

Why is America such a focus?

When it comes to trunk shows, I used to do them in the UK before I had the store. But I’ve found that as our prices have gone up over the years, that model just doesn’t work so much in the UK. I think there’s a way you present jewelry in the UK, where people expect to see something of high value under a cabinet or sold in a certain way. I don’t think those barriers exist there so much in the US. Also, American women just really understand jewelry. They love entrepreneurship and female-led businesses. It’s been a big driving factor in the growth of the brand.

America has always been a part of my strategy. Before starting this brand, I worked on the PR side of things for fine jewelry for a long time. I had an understanding of how the American woman shopped, and I knew that the pieces I was producing and designing were aligned. I did my first trunk show in America.

Gold and silver prices are constantly rising. According to our recent report, the industry is thriving despite this. Is this also the case for independent jewelers?

All my gold pieces are 14-karat, which is quite unusual for a British brand. My goal from the beginning was to offer pieces that were cool and didn’t feel generic, but also at the entry level of fine jewelry. That’s why I did 14 karats, and I managed to make it work for a while. But obviously, in the last six months, the cost of gold has gone up so much, which means I have to put my prices up. It does upset me because I think if you have £5,000, you should be able to buy something really beautiful, meaningful, and substantial. And I think, for a lot of brands, that’s just impossible.

One thing I noticed this year is that suddenly, so many people want to talk to me about the price of my materials. Which means that the end customer is incredibly educated about the value of what they’re buying. I think that’s kind of helped things. In other luxury categories, let’s say handbags, the prices have increased, and people don’t understand why. With jewelry, it’s very clear why it costs more money and that it will last and be an investment.

I’ve also been preoccupied lately with this notion of value. How can a brand communicate value these days? I don’t know how much the craft messaging is cutting through anymore.

It’s really hard. It’s something that we’ve been talking about because the price of our chains has gone up quite a lot. But our chains are solid. They’re heavy. And I’ve noticed that some retailers are maybe buying cheaper stock chains from white label and selling them as their own. And it might look similar to my work, but it’s not. It’s not going to feel the same. So I always think, how can I communicate the weight of this piece and the feel of it around your neck, when you sit and play with it absentmindedly, or the noise it makes when you walk? How can I communicate that to my clients?

Before we hang up, we have to talk about pearls. What made you want to work with them?

A lot of the time, when I’m designing, it starts with “what don’t I have in my personal collection?” I have a lot of vintage in my personal collection, and I felt like I wanted to wear something a little bolder and a little bit more playful, maybe. I’m not a white pearl girl at all, but I love baroque pearls, so we did these big baroque pearls. They’re pretty easy to work with too.

You can catch up with last week’s Scoop with Shahram Saadat and Niall Wilson here.