PORTFOLIO.YVR: Pamela Cloud | Roseate Jewelry

After a 25-year career as CMO at Tiffany & Co, Pamela Cloud founded Roseate Jewelry, creating a luxury brand committed to transparency and traceability. She wanted to do better because she believes beautiful things made of natural materials can and should have a lower impact on the planet.

Pamela shares, “Pearls signify an aspiration of natural purity, perfection, and renewability. At Roseate, day-to-day, this means doing business in the best way possible. We started by posing the question: If you were to create a brand from scratch what would you do differently? “Saltwater pearls are one of the only genuinely sustainable and the most responsibly produced precious jewelry materials. No other jewelry material comes close.

Based on sustainably gathered wild oysters or nursery-grown oysters, pearl farms exist in harmony with the natural marine environment. In fact, they require a pristine marine environment to flourish, so saltwater pearl farmers have an economic interest in protecting the marine environment.

“Saltwater pearl farms often act as de facto marine protected areas and can potentially have a regenerative impact on marine ecosystems.”

Her commitment to the planet does not end with pearls. Roseate sources all diamonds for its creation from LightBox Diamonds, all created in an Oregon lab using 100% wind power energy.

ORIGIN STORY

Born in water and designed in New York City, Roseate (roh-zee-it) is an emerging fine jewelry brand that is as bright and optimistic as the name promises.

Roseate’s story begins with the oyster – one of the few living creatures that create gems, luminous pearls and a collection of evocative jewelry that expresses the magic of saltwater pearls in a new way.

Pamela chose to work with award-winning jewelry designer Eddie Borgo for the inaugural collection, as the history of pearls has long interested Eddie, and designing the Roseate fine jewelry collection gave him a chance to reconsider this unique object.

Each piece is a personal talisman inspired by universal symbols of nature and humanity. The fundamental form is a glistening droplet of water. From that, many motifs emerge, including dimensional hearts, tactile flowers, and an inventive interpretation of a padlock. The collection is produced with ethically and sustainably sourced South Sea and Tahitian pearls and mother-of-pearl and meticulously crafted in the United States.

Saltwater pearls are the world’s only genuinely sustainable precious gems. There are no beautiful pearls without healthy oysters, and there are no healthy oysters without pristine oceans.

Oceans are the world’s single largest source of carbon capture. Healthy oceans help limit climate change by absorbing about 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions globally and capturing 90% of the excess heat generated by these emissions. This absorbed carbon is known as “blue carbon.”

Recognizing this vital role, and the role that clean and healthy oceans play in creating pearls, Roseate is committed to donating 20% of sales of specific designs to organizations leading work in blue carbon, including Conservation International and Billion Oyster Project.

IN HER WORDS

“Leaving Tiffany & Co after 25 years, honestly, was disorienting and scary, perhaps made more so because my departure coincided with pandemic lockdowns.

“I had grown up at Tiffany. It was the biggest part of my professional identity. I started at the bottom of the merchandising organization and worked my way up. It took quite a long time to adjust, but I am privileged to be able to go solo and create a brand using materials that I love in a new design way.

“It’s also allowed me to organize my life differently. It’s true that you are constantly working when engaged in a start-up, but I can also travel for an extended amount of time with my family, and I can take my rescue pup, Rocket, to work with me.

“We are also such a small team [at Roseate] that there are no silos – everyone is pitching in to create the best path forward.

“Roseate’s launch collection has 50 pieces, and one would think this would be difficult to design, but I found the opposite problem! It was a challenge to decide how to narrow the collection to the most promising 50 pieces with so many excellent designs on the table. We partnered with an amazing designer, Eddie Borgo, who created more than one hundred items in the assortment. We have years of future launches and expansion possibilities. It will be exciting to see what grows and which collections are the most successful.

“Consistent with our goal of doing business better, it was important for us to support the work conservation organizations are doing to protect the oceans, marine habitats where oysters live, and “blue carbon,” which is ocean carbon capture.

“Currently, our focus is on sourcing with transparency. We think this could apply to workshops, mines and farms globally. We are working on some interesting ideas, like offering rubies from Greenland.

“We want to extend the idea of materials traceability as far as possible, including gold. It is difficult to get traceability with some gold jewelry components, notably chains and clasps. We have goals to improve this and hope the industry will move in that direction.

“Speaking to the future, we plan to expand our men’s collections further to ensure we deliver on the inclusivity promise of Roseate that modern pearls are for everyone.

“Every day we see signs that men are embracing the evolving idea of wearing pearls. This includes my own high school kids and what they express about fashion sense.

“It is clear to us that saltwater pearls, as the most sustainable and responsible of all precious jewelry materials, remain a largely unknown and underappreciated fact. Part of what we want to accomplish at Roseate, in addition to building our brand, is to shine a brighter light on the unique virtues of pearl jewelry.

“We hope to be a broadly recognizable and respected jewelry brand known for its signature design and for doing business in the best way possible. And, always, with a pearl.”

Are you looking at pearls in a whole new light? Visit the Roseate website and be inspired by the inaugural collection!

Read the original flippable version of this story in PORTFOLIO.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs here!

Author Profile

Helen Siwak, Luxury Lifestyle Observer: Helen Siwak is the founder of EcoLuxLuv Marketing & Communications Inc and publisher of Folio.YVR Luxury Lifestyle Magazine, PORTFOLIOY.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs Magazine, and digital women's lifestyle magazine EcoLuxLifestyle.co. She is a prolific content creator, consultant, and marketing and media strategist within the ecoluxury lifestyle niche. Post-pandemic, she has worked with many small to mid-sized plant-based/vegan brands to build their digital foundations and strategize content creation and business development. Helen is the west coast correspondent to Canada’s top-read industry magazine Retail-Insider, holds a vast freelance portfolio, and consults with many of the world’s luxury heritage brands. Always seeking new opportunities and challenges, you can email her at helen@ecoluxluv.com.