SINGAPORE – (Reuters) – For someone with $55 million to spare on an egg-sized diamond, the world’s most expensive necklace is on sale this month at a jewellery show in Singapore, reflecting Asia’s growing appetite for precious gems and expensive baubles.
Known as L’Incomparable, the necklace created by luxury jeweller Mouawad features a yellow, internally flawless diamond of more than 407 carats suspended from a rose gold setting that is studded with 90 white diamonds weighing nearly 230 carats.
“Serious interest” has been expressed by a couple of potential buyers from Asia, said Jean Nasr, managing director of Mouawad in Singapore, declining to identify their nationalities.
“People who will get something like this are looking at it from a different perspective because this is definitely an investment piece,” he told Reuters.
The necklace, whose centrepiece diamond was found by chance in a pile of mining rubble by a young girl in the Democratic Republic of Congo about 30 years ago, will be the flashiest item on offer at the Singapore JewelFest on October 11-20.
But there will be plenty of other glitz from American, European and Asian designers worth another $200 million or so.
Singapore, a tiny Southeast Asian nation with the world’s highest concentration of millionaires, has positioned itself as a destination for the ultra-rich with a busy wealth management industry, luxury properties, top hotels, gourmet restaurants, high-end boutiques and two casinos.
While the city-state boasts a very low crime rate, security will be extremely tight with so much jewellery on display at a pavilion outside an upscale mall.
It seems unlikely there would be a robbery in Singapore like the daylight heist of about $136 million worth of jewellery on show at a hotel in the French Riviera resort of Cannes in July.
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