The scriptwriters’ strike started on November 5 last year threatened to deliver another blow to the U.S. jewelry industry. Due to consorted efforts and trade-union solidarity, the Writers Guild managed to frustrate the 65th gala ceremony convened to award “Golden Globes”, which instead scaled down to a press-conference. The Guild was also ready to boycott the Grammy and Oscar ceremonies.
All this produced quite a thrill among jewelry companies and industry organizations.
“From the perspective of the jewelry industry, it is really a shame,” said Michael O’Connor, senior vice president of marketing communication and public relations of the Platinum Guild International in connection with the cancelled Golden Globe Awards. “We had 42 designers who literally had the red carpet pulled out from under them. They have lost the consumer brand awareness and celebrity placement that they normally get.”
Virtually, Hollywood celebrities appearing on the red carpet before the ceremony set the style for the year ahead. The ceremony ends, the jewelry is put away into the safe, but there are photos, which do not leave the pages of fashion editions during the whole year.
It is appropriate to remember that one year ago it was the Golden Globe, which gave a start to the counterpropaganda campaign against the “Blood Diamond” movie, when at the height of disputes around the diamond industry some celebrities, Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Lopez among them, appeared at the ceremony wearing diamonds.
Following the Globe, jewelers also lost the People’s Choice Awards, a far less important ceremony. The awards were handed out within a curtailed format and without a red carpet defile.
This situation led to a soaring value of other social events, which would never gain such close attention from the press under other circumstances.
Thus, Internet tabloids used many large photos to describe the gala party given by the National Board of Review (a non-commercial organization of film-makers) in New York, where Kate Winslet, Michael Douglas, Catarine Zeta-Jones and other celebrities posed on the background of Bulgari logos. Photoreporters went to see one of the movie premieres to take pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar wearing Amrapali of Jaipur earrings and bracelets.
Chanel’s “Night of Diamonds” turned to be a special treat for New York. On January 17, the affluent and famous residents of the megalopolis were shown the Vendome Collection of diamonds. Abiding the organizers’ scenario, 20 pieces of jewelry art were presented in movement worn by renowned models. All the women were dressed exclusively in black-and-white colours to create the most favourable background for jewelry and to conform to the spirit of the 1930s to which the gala was styled.
The Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony held on January 27 acquired immediate immensity in the absence of good news from the writers. However, the mass media proper noted that this show was not able to replace major movie ceremonies at least because in 2007 Oscar was watched by 40 million TV viewers, while this year’s SAG event gathered only 6.1 million. And then too, judging by the participants this was quite evidently a second-rate event and the “National Jeweler” was not amiss off-handedly dubbing the guests at the ceremony as “starlets,” since the major part of those present was filled by TV stars, whose position in the celebrities’ table of ranks was by far the top one.
From this point of view, even Grammy gives in to the Globe and Oscar ceremonies although it was held on February 10 due the agreement reached with the writers not to picket it. This is also because musicians despite all their popularity stand in the tacit American star hierarchy below movie stars, who occupy the highest position in the celebrity classification.
The Oscar Awards ceremony was beyond the frames of the month under consideration, but producers and writers managed to come to a “bad peace” deal by the time it was to be held. In this way, jewelers won another opportunity to adorn the Hollywood avatars with their treasures. There is a remaining problem noted by the U.S. mass media connected with continuous, from year to year, drop of broadcasting ratings held by major musical and movie ceremonies. Evidently, this is not due only to how good or bad such events are but also due to the general diminution of the aired television audience in the U.S.A. Nevertheless, as it has already been stressed, the accomplished red carpet defile of movie stars will have its impact on fashion trends in the course of the current year.
