When the acidic lime color on the cover of “brat,” the latest album by the British pop star Charli XCX, blazed through social media accounts in July, Bea Bongiasca, a jewelry designer in Milan, felt the heat.
“People are much more interested in this chartreuse-y green than they were last year,” Ms. Bongiasca wrote in an email. “I can see it both in my brand’s sales, which have increased by at least 25 percent in our lime green styles, as well as by looking at how people are dressed on the street. It has definitely replaced last summer’s ‘Barbie’ pink.”
Brent Neale Winston, a designer in New York who has made jewels set with Brazilian opals in the same slime shade as “brat” green, also took notice.
“We were talking about this in our office, which is female and trends younger than me,” Ms. Winston said. “I said, ‘Explain this brat girl summer to me.’ The word ‘brat’ to me means you’re acting entitled. It’s a negative connotation.
“They’re like, ‘No, this means you’re owning who you are; you’re being true to yourself; you’re doing you.’ Which is so funny because it equates to the color. It’s a very bold color. It’s not for everyone.”
Indeed. Some have labeled brat green “intentionally nauseating,” “abrasive” and “off-putting.”
Among jewelers, however, it’s always a “brat” summer.
That particular green is the color of peridot, the gem variety of the mineral olivine and August’s polarizing birthstone. A semiprecious gem, it typically sells for anywhere from $40 to $400 per carat.
“A lot of people say, ‘I don’t like that color,’ and then you show them the brighter greens as opposed to the olive greens — which they think peridot is — and they seem to be much more interested,” said Eric Braunwart, the owner of Columbia Gem House, a gemstone cutter and supplier in Vancouver, Wash.
In the gem trade, where demand is often driven by supply, peridot’s spotty availability is another reason the stone — most commonly mined in Arizona, Pakistan and Myanmar — has never really become popular.
But a new mine, established in 2015 in the Jilin Province of northeastern China, may soon change that. Located in the foothills of the Changbai Mountains, the Fuli Gemstones mine has some peridots already in circulation from a geological survey. But Fuli is planning to start sampling the mine at the end of this year and to begin full commercial production in 2025, said Pia Tonna, Fuli’s executive director.
“The mine can produce up to 60 million carats, but we want to bring it to market carefully,” Ms. Tonna said.
“Some gems have flooded the market; they come and go,” she said. “But peridot has never been exploited; it fell off the map because of lack of supply. Now there’s this huge deposit.”
To help stoke excitement about peridot, Fuli hired Joanna Hardy, a jewelry lecturer and gemologist in London, to give a presentation about the gem in February in Tucson, Ariz., during the annual gem shows.
“When Fuli asked me to lecture about peridot, I thought, ‘Longer than 10 minutes? What am I going to say?’” Ms. Hardy recalled. “I started to research it and thought, my God, I can talk for two hours. It was found on Zabargad, St. John’s Island, in the Red Sea, this tiny island that’s absolutely uninhabitable.”
“No fresh water — the only thing that lives on this island is snakes,” she added. “And peridot.”
Elsewhere in the gem world, some varieties of chrysoberyl, demantoid garnet and sphene come close to approximating “brat” green. None, however, compare in brilliance or value with green diamonds.
Larry West, a dealer in New York who specializes in rare natural colored diamonds, recently acquired a 1.2-carat vivid yellowish-green diamond that, for marketing purposes, he named the Cosmic Green. And while he would not disclose a precise price, he said it was valued at more than $2 million.
“I’ve seen hundreds of green diamonds over the years,” Mr. West said by phone recently. “This is the most saturated and brilliant version I’ve seen. It kind of looks fake it’s so good.”
Yet the very point of “brat” green is that it is meant to be an unapologetic expression of authenticity, said Laurie Pressman, the vice president of the Pantone Color Institute in Carlstadt, N.J. (And one possible reason Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign seized on the color in July, when her social media account on X, formerly Twitter, rebranded with the hue.)
“‘Brat’ green is not a political statement as much as it is about being confident about who you are,” Ms. Pressman said. “To those of us that sit in the trend space, these sour greens and saturated yellows are adding zing and unpredictability — they’re shaking up the energy.”
Stephanie Gottlieb, a jeweler in New York City who has nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram, said she channeled that energy in late July, when she wore a bright green outfit complete with iridescent lime Jimmy Choos, to her birthday celebration in Southampton, N.Y.
“‘Dirty martini’ was the intended theme,” Ms. Gottlieb said. “So I just kind of rode the green train there. I’d gone to the Tucson gem shows for my first time in February and one of the first booths I came across had these demantoid green garnets, and I was just obsessed with the color. I bought one of the tennis necklaces, and I ended up wearing that for my birthday.
“It was green glory.”
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