As childhood friends in Paris, Iris de La Villardière and Thomas Montier Leboucher didn’t plan to go into business together. But as adults, they both ended up working in the jewelry industry — Ms. de La Villardière at the French brands Stone Paris and Marie-Hélène de Taillac and Mr. Montier Leboucher in London for Cartier and Fernando Jorge — and they quit their jobs in 2019 to do just that.
Viltier, the pair’s unisex fine jewelry collection, debuted the following year. (The brand name is an amalgamation of letters from the founders’ last names.)
Ms. de La Villardière, 32, and Mr. Montier Leboucher, 31, offer designs that are assertive but refined. The Edge collection, for example, has chunky pieces such as rings and hoop earrings made of small 18-karat gold cylinders, often accented with diamonds. And the Magnetic collection of pendants, necklaces, bracelets, rings, cuff links and earrings highlights an oval detail that has become a brand trademark.
Prices range from €890 ($942) for a simple gold band to €78,000 for an Edge cuff detailed with more than 1,000 pavé diamonds.
Viltier is sold through its website and Net-a-Porter; at department stores such as Bon Marché Rive Gauche in Paris and Bergdorf Goodman in New York; and in boutiques like Whitebird in Paris, Just One Eye in Los Angeles and Twist in Seattle and Portland, Ore.
“They have a certain look that is unique,” said Dawn Klohs, a co-owner and co-buyer at A’maree’s, a boutique in Newport Beach, Calif. The store began selling Viltier a little more than a year ago and she was particularly impressed, she added, by the brand’s craftsmanship and “modern hand.”
Viltier’s founders — friends who are so close that they regularly finish each other’s sentences — recently spoke from the brand’s showroom in Paris about competition, magnetism and the benefits of having workshops nearby. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
There are so many jewelry brands out there. Do you feel you have lots of competition?
THOMAS MONTIER LEBOUCHER We have so much and not so much. It’s funny: We have some friends that work in fashion, where sometimes I’m amazed by the amount of brands. I feel it’s very saturated, whereas in jewelry, you have many brands, but you also have many kinds of positioning …
IRIS DE LA VILLARDIÈRE … and different images and different words. And in Paris …
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER … like in Paris, for instance, there are not that many jewelry brands that do fine jewelry in the way we do it, so we’re OK.
Was creating distinctive motifs, like what’s in the Magnetic collection, a goal?
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER What was a priority was to have something that was singular, which in turn becomes something that was recognizable. We wanted to come up with something that was unique and had a clear direction.
MS. DE LA VILLARDIÈRE As we were working in the jewelry industry, we really wanted to have our signature. We didn’t want to have a copy, something that looked too much like something we knew.
Was the Magnetic design intended to resemble a link?
MS. DE LA VILLARDIÈRE It was an image for the magnetic feeling that we had when we decided …
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER … to create the brand …
MS. DE LA VILLARDIÈRE … and work together. Now the magnetic collection is like a union symbol: a symbol of love, a symbol of friendship, so that was the name of the collection.
The Magnetic pieces aren’t literally magnetic though, correct?
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER We often get that question on e-commerce — clients in the U.S. actually are asking if they close with magnets, but no, they don’t.
How has the commercial success of Magnetic helped with your brand overall?
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER We’re very lucky to have this one because we know that it can guarantee a stream of cash to also be more creative with other creations. It’s a very reassuring collection for us to have.
MS. DE LA VILLARDIÈRE That we have the Magnetic collection, we can also draw much more artistic pieces that we know maybe we won’t sell as fast.
Are sales something you think about frequently?
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER We are always aware of that. We are self-financed. We don’t have investors, so the cash conversation is a conversation that we have daily at the office.
MS. DE LA VILLARDIÈRE Daily!
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER Yeah, daily — hourly almost! — because if we have two bad months, it can be the end maybe. You never know. We’re very aware that we need to have a commercial vision behind it, but it’s all about balance.
Why have you added high jewelry pieces?
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER We’ve always wanted to do some, even though we wanted to do it in a certain way, as in: we want to create jewelry that is wearable — we love the idea of having a high jewelry piece that you can wear to dinner at a bistro in Paris, a cool dinner with some friends. We didn’t want to have a huge plastron — something too classic. Again, financially, it gets tricky to invest in those pieces if you’re not sure if they’ll be sold. But we are very lucky, because we started having some requests from clients for special orders, so that’s how it started.
All your jewelry is made in France. Why did you decide to handle production that way?
MR. MONTIER LEBOUCHER We wanted to be close to our workshops — that’s the first thing. Sometimes I wonder with Iris, “How do these other brands create if they’re not next to their workshop?” It’s such a luxury to be able to go to the workshop, see a prototype and talk to the craftsman, so he can explain to you why he can’t do this or why he should do it this different way. And also, we’re French: We’re selling a story. I say this more from the marketing perspective, but the fact is that it’s 100 percent made in France. We are designing from Paris, we’re both French. It’s correct and it gives a thread to the whole story.
You don’t own those workshops, correct?
MS. DE LA VILLARDIÈRE We are talking a lot about opening our own atelier. That’s something that we’d like.
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