Luxury jeweler Harry Winston has joined De Beers and others in bringing their wares online. This is the first time that Harry Winston jewelry has been available online. The Harry Winston online salon showcases diamond jewelry including rings, watches, bracelets and cufflinks. One of the most expensive is this stunning necklace from the Harry Winston sunflower collection. The center stone of each flower is surrounded by eight round brilliant diamonds set in platinum. It is approximately 25.8 carats and sells for $135,000.

[via Fashion Week Daily]

Although anybody can take gold and diamonds and make jewelry, some jewelers have the gift of putting precious metals and gems together to form truly beautiful and inspiring pieces of art. Much like in the art world every person has their own personal tastes and preferences when it comes to jewelry, but of the best jewelers in the world have you ever wondered who was the best of the best? The Luxury Institute in New York did, and so they recently interviewed 500 wealthy luxury consumers and asked them to rate 20 of the world's top jewelers in order to come up with a ranked list of the top 10.

Harry Winston came out as the #1 most prestigious jewelry brand.

Do you agree or disagree? See the rest of the top 10 and then let us know in the comments!

They say jewelry is a bad investment but it depends on what you buy. Calvin Klein, who bought jewels belonging to the Duchess of Windsor for Kelly Klein made quite a return on his investment. The collection of natural pearls the couple put up for sale brought in $4.82 million, far above the $3.1 million high estimate. I hope whoever bought it wears it, wearing pearls helps them keep their luster.

The jewels were part of the Sotheby's Magnificent Jewels auction in New York Tuesday in which 366 lots went for a total for $48.827 million. Other expensive pieces included a pair of Harry Winston diamond pendant-earrings that sold for $3.961 million and a pear-shaped 32.16 carat Harry Winston diamond ring which went for $3.289 million. The Jewels for the Jungle auction also did well bringing in a total of $1.181 million for the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Harry Winston is making some interesting moves in the diamond area. WWD reports on the fact that Aber Diamond Corp., the mining company that owns Harry Winston is officially being renamed to Harry Winston Diamond Corp. What makes this interesting to jewelry industry watchers is that the firm has a 40 percent interest in the Diavik Diamond Mine in Lac de Gras in Canada's Northwest Territories which produces 10 percent of the world's diamonds. Those diamonds are sold to Winston and other suppliers. Now that Aber is officially Harry Winston, every diamond that comes out of the mine becomes a Harry Winston diamond, tying those stones to one of the most recognizable names in the jewelry world. This is just another layer to the trend we recently mentioned in which branding the stone has become as important as branding the jewelry itself.

One interesting fact from the piece is that most of the diamonds that come from the Diavik mine are long and linear, so the company still has to outsource for round, pear and marquise-shape diamonds as well as other gemstones. Aber has also invested $2 billion in Canadian mining opportunities. Canada is the site of massive mining growth, not just for diamonds but for other gemstones such as rubies and sapphires.

Winston is also expanding their retail outlets into large 5,000 to 6,000-square-foot flagship stores, medium sized 2,000 to 2,500-square-foot stores and smaller 1,000-square-foot stores. All of them require deep pockets just to get in the door, the opening price point is set at close to $4,000 and of course, the sky is the limit. Check out the diamond-heavy wristwatch at right, it is a limited edition of 50 that cost $176,000 each. The company also uses only diamonds at the top end of the color grading scale, just diamonds graded, D, E and F (the scale starts at D for the whitest diamonds and goes all the way to Z).

The article also addresses briefly the huge robbery at Harry Winston Paris in October. So far no arrests have been made in the theft of over $28 million in diamonds.

I don't generally write about jewelry theft but when a Harry Winston boutique gets robbed you have to pay attention. Last weekend, thieves took approximately €20 million in jewels from the Harry Winston store. It is one of the largest jewel thefts ever. The masked and armed men entered the store on Saturday morning and got the employees to open the safe. They took off with a bag of gems that included a €3.2 million diamond-studded bracelet and a large diamond worth €2 million. The police believe the robbers are professionals and they hope to try and catch the thieves when they try to resell the merchandise. The thieves will have to move fast, the investigators are distributing information about the specific stolen pieces around the world.

We're a bit late to the show on this one but the Glissière tourbillon automatic watch from Harry Winston definitely deserves mentioning. I had seen pictures of the watch before but it took a piece in Europastar to help me figure out why this watch is so unique. The Glissière offers a new way to automatically wind a movement, instead of the motion being circular it is side to side. The inspiration came from the piston motion of steam engines. One the dial side here are two platinum carriages which are guided by rails beside the gear trains, a bridge with a cut-out pattern of the HW monogram, and a flying tourbillon. The movement generated by the platinum pins isn't enough to wind the barrel spring so on the back there are two other methods of winding in the shape of fans rising and falling around a central access. It takes around four hours to completely win the barrel spring which has a reserve of more than 90 hours.

Celebrity jewels are on the auction block again this fall. The Magnificent Jewels sales from Christie's on October 16 in New York City will include more than $25 million worth of jewels including property from the estate of actress Lucille Desiree Ball. The collection features signed jewelry by Van Cleef & Arpels such as a suite of yellow sapphire and diamond jewelry that includes a pendant necklace, a pair of ear clips and ring. A portion of the proceeds from this collection go to the The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York. The sale will also feature a variety of important diamonds including a 38.47 D,VS1 diamond estimated to sell for $2,300,000-$2,500,000 and several colored diamonds such as a pear-shaped fancy blue-gray diamond of 7.88 carats with an estimate of $700,000-$1,000,000 and a pear-shaped fancy vivid orangy-yellow diamond of 12.55 carats with an estimate of $800,000-$1,200,000.

Christie's is also holding a separate sale on the same day of 40 pieces from a private collection valued at $4 million. The collection features a variety of Harry Winston pieces including a rectangular-cut, D, VVS2 Type IIa 23.14 carat diamond ring which is estimated to sell for $800,000-$1,200,000. Type IIa diamonds are sometimes referred to as Golconda diamonds because they were first seen in the Golconda region of India and they are exceptionally clean and dazzling. My favorite piece of the 40-piece collection is the Tiffany & Co. brooch shown above. It is shaped like a Maltese cross with a stained glass design of sapphires, gold and diamonds around a central square-cut aquamarine, weighing approximately 19.48 carats. It is estimated to sell for $15,000-$25,000.

Harry Winston calls this necklace Attraction for obvious reason, it's practically large enough to have its own gravitational pull (or at least it seems that way). This dazzler has a 31.19 carat D color, internally flawless diamond which on its own is a rare and spectacular gem. But at Harry Winston they are all about gilding the lily and so this stone is set within a frame of pear-shaped and brilliant-cut diamonds and hangs from a chain of pears and brilliants that is over 72 carats. The pendant can also be worn as a brooch. The one-of-a-kind piece is available at the Harry Winston New York salon.

It seems like a lot of major watch companies are coming out with perpetual calendars this season. The latest is from Harry Winston. it has an automatic movement with second timezone indication, retrograde day and month, moon phase and leap year complications. The large watch has a 41mm case done in white gold and has front and back sapphire crystals. The watch followers on the Harry Winston forum are all abuzz about it. Like some of the posters over there, I have issues with the lugs and the dominance of the case. I also don't love the layout of the dial. I would move the moon phase to the left hand side of the dial so that it doesn't take a chunk out of the time indicator.

[via Time Zone]

Here we are already in 2007 and somehow the Opus 6, the latest Harry Winston masterpiece unveiled last spring slipped under my radar. Now I see why. While I loved the Opus V, the result of a collaboration with Felix Baumgartner, the Opus 6, a collaboration with Greubel Forsey just doesn't leave me as swoony. It's impressive, a huge white gold case features a double tourbillon that has a one minute cage rotating inside a four minute one inclined at 30° from the horizontal. The time is determined by reading the three small discs at the top of the watch.

You can see booth pics here. Just six of these watches have been made. The watch is an amazing accomplishment but perhaps it's that incline that makes it seem too thick. To my taste it just seems like several elements are combined together without any cohesive design sense. The Watch Quote has an in-depth feature on this watch complete with the design sketches that makes me appreciate, if not love, this watch.

And oh yes, there will be an Opus 7, to be shown at Baselworld this coming April. An interview in GMT with Hamdi Chatti, CEO of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces gives no clues about what the new Opus 7 will look like, only that there will be one. I also like that in the interview he mentions that he is committed to creating a Harry Winston watch that is "both radically feminine and intensely horological." Now that would really make me swoon.

The newest watch from Harry Winston isn't just pretty, it sings. The Westminster Flying Tourbillon was created to honor Harry Winston's new salon in London. The watch not only has a tourbillon it also has a minute repeater which chimes the same notes as the clock tower on the Palace of Westminster. The wearable masterpiece has four cathedral gongs for the four notes in the tune of the Westminster chime which are fixed around the movement. The watch has a 70-hour power reserve and the movement is visible through front and back sapphire crystal. There are just eight of the the 18K rose gold watches available as well as a gem-set version.

What's tougher than titanium? This manly watch comes from the usually genteel and jewel-heavy Harry Winston line. It is made from the super tough metal Zalium. The case is a wrist-weighing 44 mm and has a mechanical self-winding tourbillon movement HW401A that beats at 28,800 v.p.h. The watch was created with watch hunk Peter Speake-Marin and has off-centered hours and minutes. This sporty tourbillon is water resistant and  has a black dial with Superluminova blue hands and numbers, sapphire crystal front and back and a rubber strap.

We received some great pictures from the "Masters of Excellence" in Abu Dhabi May 8-11.  My favorite was this picture which features the massive Emirates Hotel In the background. The event took place at The Emirates Hotel and involved gala dinners fashions shows from designers and jewelers including Calvin Klein, Harry Winston and Graff diamonds. The event was attended by VIPs from the Gulf region.  As we've seen recently Abu Dhabi is making a bid for the luxury market that has been luring people to Dubai using the same formula of lavish hotels, innovative architecture and well-respected luxury brand names.

 As this article in the Financial Times points out,  Abu Dhabi is the richest of the seven emirates and is now attracting more and more tourists and high-flying spenders. Oil was discovered in Abu Dhabi in 1958 and since then the city has seen tremendous growth.   After the jump, pictures from the events including the fashions shows and some stunning creations from Graff jewelers.

The latest watch from Harry Winston is a ladies' watch that combines "Haute Joallerie and Haute Horlogerie," otherwise known as lots of diamonds and lots of functions. The Ocean Lady Biretro is a 36mm watch which has a mechanical self-winding movement with functions that show the days of the week and seconds. Hours and minutes are shown at the top of the diamond dial and a large date display is at the bottom. The mother-of-pearl dial is set with 96 diamonds framing the counters. The bezel, attachments, hinges and buckle set with 90 diamonds and it has a gray alligator strap.