SC&CO worked with Alan Faye on the design foundations for his return to high jewellery, establishing a digital collection led by a campaign shoot with the photographer Jim Krantz.
Faye’s strength lies in the making. The pieces are conceived and finished by hand, and at this level the work itself carries the proposition more convincingly than anything said around it. The question for the relaunch was therefore how the work should be presented, rather than how it should be sold.
Research at this end of the market supported a familiar conclusion. Pieces of this value are rarely bought unseen, and a conventional cart would have positioned the collection as commercial jewellery at precisely the point it needed to be understood as something closer to wearable art.
The model SC&CO established is closer to a gallery than a shop. Works are exhibited rather than merchandised, collection pieces carry a price while bespoke and unique commissions are held on application, and acquisition begins with a conversation. Every route through the site resolves to the same action, Book Appointment, and the appointment is treated as the transaction in its own right, carrying the piece, the size, the Hollywood atelier, the date and the hour. Appointments sits at the top level of the menu rather than within a service page.
The Jim Krantz campaign leads the collection and sets its register. Photography runs full-bleed and largely uninterrupted, with the product card placed over it as a light layer that names the piece and offers the appointment without disturbing the image. Detail panels open over the campaign rather than replacing it, so that a piece is never separated from the context that gives it meaning.
Specification is handled as a gallery would handle a label. Reference numbers, carat total weight, gold weight in grams and country of manufacture are all given, set with restraint rather than the density of a retail specification table, so that an informed buyer has what they need and the conversation that follows has somewhere to begin.
The intention throughout was to establish foundations: a considered presentation of the work, a clear model for how it is acquired, and a reference that the relaunch could be built on.
The value of the engagement lay in settling the position before any build began.
Presented as a gallery rather than a store, the collection is held at the level the making deserves, and the route to acquisition is set by the atelier rather than by a checkout. It gives Faye a coherent foundation in which the photography, the presentation of the work and the terms of sale all describe the same house.