Nikos Koulis’s style signifier is a diamond pinkie ring, such as the seven-carat round diamond perched on the edge of a brushed gold band that the jewelry designer wore during a video interview in early August from Athens. “I feel naked without a pinkie ring,” he said.
His rings, however, do not stay on his fingers for long: “Clients always want what I’m wearing.”
And now they have a new place to buy them. Last month Mr. Koulis, 47, opened a new flagship on Voukourestiou Street, the luxury shopping strip in Athens already populated by the likes of Cartier, Prada and Bulgari. It is his fourth outpost, all of which are in Greece: He opened in Kolonaki Square in Athens a decade ago and has seasonal summer stores on the islands of Mykonos and Paros.
The new storefront, designed in collaboration with the architectural firm Bureau de Change in London, was styled to facilitate conversations with clients. “The personal relationship with the client is important to me,” Mr. Koulis said, “I want it to be a journey where they sit down and we discuss what they want, and then we bring pieces out from the safe just for them. I want them to feel special.”
He added that its aesthetic was influenced by the style of his modern, sculptural jewelry, which plays with light and dark, smooth and sharp. He creates top-end and one-of-a-kind pieces from $5,500 to $55,000, although designs with distinctive stones such as a rare Colombian emerald or 10-carat diamond would be more.
The silk-lined walls contrast with the dark oak floors, and the shop has a mix of furnishings, art and objects from different eras, including Andrée Putman armchairs and an antique Aldo Tura desk sitting in front of an Art Nouveau mirror from the late 1800s. The mezzanine level is for private appointments. And the exterior has a single large asymmetrical window framed in marble, a nod to the designer’s Greek heritage, surrounded on two sides with aluminum, a reference to the metal he has been working with recently.
At a time when there are numerous high-end jewelry brands with stores in many major cities worldwide, Mr. Koulis said he chose to keep his business small and intimate, which gives him the ability to know his clients.
That connection is what attracted Christina Papadopoulou, a senior director at the Gagosian gallery in Athens, who met Mr. Koulis a decade ago.
“I love his distinct style, his jewelry’s Art Deco influence, geometric line and the way he blends the feminine and masculine,” she said. “Because Nikos is an art collector and has many interests, we speak the same language. That connection translates into how I respond to his jewelry and how it makes me feel when I wear it.”
His Own Style
Mr. Koulis’s personal uniform — button-down shirts and trousers in monochromatic tones from the Row or Loro Piana — reflects his jewelry style. In addition to a pinkie ring, he often wears a sleek brooch with diamonds in unusual cuts, such as a cornered trillion-cut or an elongated step-cut.
The graphic, sculpted shapes of his pieces have attracted affluent shoppers.
“The jewelry business has recently shifted,” said Andrew Mandell, a divisional merchandise manager at Bergdorf Goodman, the New York department store that has sold Mr. Koulis’s collection for a decade. “Women still want high jewelry pieces, but they want to wear them every day and they want something that expresses their individuality. Nikos creates that kind of beautiful jewelry with a distinct point of view: exceptionally made pieces that you can wear with jeans or a gown.”
That versatility appealed to Ms. Papadopoulou. Among the pieces she owns is a thin gold collar with a line of baguette diamonds that she says she wears every day, including on the beach.
“The necklace is super elegant, bold, yet light,” she said. “I’m in my 30s, I’m a small person and I don’t like heavy jewelry because it makes me feel older.”
A Family of Jewelers
Mr. Koulis’s father was a jeweler in Athens, and both Mr. Koulis and his younger brother have followed in their father’s footsteps.
At first, Mr. Koulis wasn’t sure that jewelry was in his future. He studied German literature and Greek philosophy at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, but then he found himself drawn to the jewelry field. He attended the Gemological Institute of America’s program in gemology and glyptography (the art of gem engraving) in Italy and then continued his study of gem engraving in Greece. There he met his mentor, the master glyptographer Nick Kielty-Lambrinides, who, Mr. Koulis said, taught him the intricacies of high jewelry making.
After his studies, he traded diamonds for three years before opening a by-appointment atelier in Athens in 2006.
“The balance between the materials, the volume and the story behind the materials is what’s important to me,” Mr. Koulis said. His signature Qui collection, introduced in 2016, combined his love of strong Art Deco-style lines with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires in bold black enamel and gold settings.
That collection was followed by Feelings, a series of supple yellow-gold snake chain pieces, including large hoop earrings and long necklaces, accented with diamonds. And this April he introduced the ME collection, with blackened gold and brushed yellow gold pieces and diamonds that appeared to float on the edge of collars, bracelets and rings.
Most days, Mr. Koulis is in his current atelier in central Athens. It is adjacent to his workshop, where, Mr. Koulis said, the jewelry is produced by a team of 20 artisans led by a master jeweler with more than 50 years’ experience. The pieces are made with a combination of traditional skills, like hand-painting enamel, and modern techniques, like 3-D printing.
“Lately, I’ve been working with charcoal; the rich, deep blacks and the intricate play of shadows and light have caught my interest, which can also be seen influencing my jewelry design,” Mr. Koulis said.
His experiments with aluminum led to a men’s collection that was released in June. The brushed gray metal with its lightweight, industrial look was combined with gold and diamonds in bangles and rings.
In November, he plans to introduce a 22-piece high jewelry collection that also uses aluminum. The series was inspired by a painting of a dandelion, the delicate white puff balls that children are known to blow on to make a wish. He has been taking art lessons recently, and his teacher had asked him to reproduce the painting. “I wanted to make something light, something that expressed the movement of the flower,” Mr. Koulis said. He added that he had spent two years working on the designs.
The result was aluminum rings, earrings and necklaces fitted with gold prongs, each individually set with a round diamond at the end.
“I don’t know how he technically places diamonds on gold in the artful way he does it,” Mr. Mandell said. “It looks like a piece of art.”
Asked if he considers his pieces to be art, Mr. Koulis said preferred to think of them as jewelry, designs that reflect his customers: “My clients want jewelry that expresses their individuality.”
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