Constance, 1993
The times were changing, and not for the better; Constance Pavlin would never step out of the house looking like the models in the pages of that month’s Vogue. More than being in poor taste, all that anti-glamour, minimalist, grungy heroin-chic was bad for business.
“This will pass,” she assured her husband. After thirty years of marriage, she’d ridden the highs and lows of Pavlin & Co long enough to know that trends—no matter how good or how onerous—were temporary. Her husband seemed to have lost sight of that.
Alan had been in a bad mood all day. Still, they’d gone to the party. She wore Azzedine Alaïa—the one designer who she felt hadn’t yet lost his mind, unlike the house of Perry Ellis, who’d hired that young Marc Jacobs kid. The Alaïa was a form-fitting red sleeve of a dress. She’d barely eaten all week in anticipation of wearing it, but even her success in pouring herself into the unforgiving frock hadn’t put a smile on Alan’s face.
At fifty-five, Alan Pavlin had aged into a distinguished head-turner of a man. The boyish, uncertain person she’d married all those years ago had finally come into his own. It wasn’t just that he was more confident; the good looks of his youth had been honed by the passing years into something sharp and deeply attractive. And she wasn’t the only woman who’d noticed; all night long, that opportunist Betsy Laurent-Leeds had been making eyes at him. Alan, to his credit, paid little attention. But he did drink too heavily, which was very much out of character. His father, Elliot, had been a big drinker. It wasn’t uncommon for Scotch to appear at the lunch table. And Alan made a point of doing everything differently than Elliot.
Alan’s father, second-generation president and CEO of Pavlin & Co, the family’s eponymous jewelry company founded in 1919, had always treated Alan more as a child than a business partner. Two years after his father’s death, Alan was still trying to prove himself. But Elliot cast a long shadow over Pavlin & Co. After all, how did one compete with the man who single-handedly created the entire market for diamond engagement rings?
Elliot, in his day, faced the same sort of downturn Alan was grappling with now. In the 1940s, diamond sales plummeted. Post–World War II, expensive jewelry suddenly seemed frivolous. Faced with a crisis, he conducted a marketing survey, and what he found surprised him: Middle-class women preferred that their husbands spend their money on something practical, like a washing machine. Diamonds, it appeared, were only for the very wealthy.
Elliot immediately recognized the challenge in front of him: how to make diamonds a necessity instead of a luxury. To do this, he knew he would have to appeal to customers’ emotions. And what was the strongest emotion? Love. What occasions marked true love? Marriage and engagement. A rite of passage millions and millions of women experienced each year. And yes, rings were involved. But at the time, it might be a family heirloom opal or a small moonstone.
Until Elliot reminded everyone, with a dramatic and visually captivating ad campaign, that the “great” love story between Archduke Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy in 1477 began with the first-ever faceted diamond engagement ring. And the classic “A Diamond Says Love” campaign was born, changing the industry—and the very concept of engagement—forever.
Elliot had endless strategies to get the rings in front of the public, including gifting diamond rings to actresses and society women on occasions like the Academy Awards or the Kentucky Derby, then hiring photographers to get clear photographs of the baubles on display. “People don’t know what they want until you tell them what to want,” he’d said.
Now, in the last decade of the century, it again seemed difficult to convince people that what they wanted was fine jewelry.
It was a relief to be back home after the party. Their sprawling Park Avenue apartment felt empty now that two of their three daughters were out of the nest, but at moments like this she was grateful for some privacy.
“You looked very dashing in your tux tonight,” she said, asking him for help unzipping the back of her dress. The touch of his fingertips against her bare back gave her a shiver. She pulled the clips out of her hair, still long and lustrous and just now showing the first few threads of silver. She shook it loose and turned to him, wanting to remind him that Betsy Laurent-Leeds wasn’t the only woman who noticed him. But he had already retreated to the other side of the room, shedding his shirt and jacket while sitting on the edge of the bed and staring out the window.
“Alan,” she said. “It’s Friday night. You can’t carry the stress of work through the entire weekend. One bad year isn’t the end of the world.”
He looked at her with irritation. “I wish it were just one bad year.”
She sighed. Their middle daughter, Elodie, was involved in the business as well and had recently expressed her own concern.
Alan pulled back the covers. Since sex was clearly out of the question, Constance slipped into a fluffy robe and sat on her side of the bed, reaching for the hand cream on her nightstand.
“I know you’ll think of something,” she said. “You always do.” The latter comment was a small wifely lie. The truth was, while Alan was a hard worker, even a non-business-minded person like herself could see that Pavlin & Co hadn’t innovated since the “A Diamond Says Love” campaign half a century ago.
Alan climbed out of bed and left the room. When he returned he was holding a Pavlin & Co ring box. He handed it to her. “Open it,” he said, his eyes shining.
Confused, she gave him a small smile. While a gift was always appreciated, it seemed like an odd moment for one.
She lifted the lid and gasped. It was a pink diamond, the pink diamond.
Alan, in a quest for a precious stone to compete with some of the flashy gems that rival jewelers were marketing, had commissioned a dig in a remote Western Australia mine. After several years, they’d unearthed a Fancy Vivid pink diamond that was 59.6 carats in the rough. The discovery made the international news: Only one percent of all pink diamonds were larger than 10 carats, and only four percent classified as Fancy Vivid.
Alan’s gemologist studied the stone for a full year before cutting it, and then took another ten months to transform it into a 30-carat, cushion-cut gem of extraordinary beauty.
This was the first time Constance had seen it in person. Hands shaking, she shed her wedding band and slipped the ring onto her finger. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. After three decades with Alan, she was spoiled. Jaded, even. She had jewels to rival the royals, and yet this ring took her breath away. She didn’t know if it was the size, the clarity, or the delicate pink color, but the gift left her almost speechless.
“I never want to take it off,” she breathed.
“Well, you’re going to have to,” he said. “I’m giving it to one of the girls.”
She looked up at him. “Which one?”
“The first to get engaged. I’m planning a big launch event introducing the diamond. We need to remind the world that luxury makes people happy, and that romance is alive and well in the nineties.”
Constance raised her eyebrows. “Okay. But none of the girls are even close to getting engaged.”
“Well, with this incentive, that should be changing soon,” he said.
“Alan, don’t be ridiculous.” She couldn’t imagine a worse idea. Their daughters were already so competitive with one another. “They squabble over everything. This will just make that more of a problem. There must be some other publicity idea . . .”
“I’ve already summoned them back. It’s done.”
“They’re coming home?” Paulina had been in Europe for months, and Celeste rarely visited from grad school in Pennsylvania. Even Elodie, working long hours at the corporate office, might as well be in another country considering how rarely Constance saw her.
She didn’t like this idea. Not one bit. But it was Alan’s time, and he wanted to seize it. She thought of the way Betsy Laurent-Leeds had gone after him earlier that night, and the way he hadn’t noticed. He was a devoted husband. And she, in turn, had to be a supportive wife.
No matter how big a mistake he was making.