Pleasing princesses is jeweler Shahpour Jahan’s specialty

Shahpour Jahan, the seventh generation of the Jahan family business, has what many would consider the perfect plan to ride out this year’s economic turbulence: If the royal familes of the Persian Gulf who make up his clientele continue to get married, “we are good,” he says.

Not long ago, Shahpour Jahan, a jeweler based in Geneva, took an order from a young Saudi princess who wanted a necklace “she could wear every day.” A diamond-laden jewel anchored by a 9.5-carat fancy pink pear-shaped stone is what he created for her.

With clientele drawn from the royal families of the Persian Gulf, the Jahan family business, a seventh-generation affair that dates back to Tehran in the 1800s, has a different relationship with its customers than do most jewelers. “A person has a doctor, a lawyer, and we consider ourselves an advisor,” Shahpour, the company’s creative director, says. “We give them a service. We take their old jewelry that has no value, and we update it.”

When there is a major wedding, it’s not just the bride who is expected to shine. Mothers and grandmothers are also draped in jewels and will often bring their old pieces into one of the company’s three boutiques in Geneva, Riyadh or Jeddah to get a fresh re-working. A design album with a collection of dull photos documenting these quintessentially 1980s jewels (so passé looking they might as well be in neon) is a testament to this. Shahpour then re-imagines the pieces, sometimes as stylish scarf necklaces or as long cascades of stones. The emphasis, it’s clear, is on the latter. “The real value to us as jewelers is in the stones” Shahpour says. “Like land, antiques, paintings, the point is you have jewelry that will look good years from now. It’s not supposed to be like fashion.”

From a floral collar of sapphire and diamond roses to the suite of almond-sized Colombian emeralds about to be set into a diamond and white gold parure, the classic jewels that are Jahan’s bread and butter begin at 200,000 Swiss francs (about $175,000 at current exchange rates) and top out around 2 million Swiss francs.

Jahan’s singular commitment to providing a traditional, albeit modernized, selection of jewels to customers who have patronized the store for decades has placed it in a good position to ride out the current economic downturn. Based in Geneva since 1980, when Shahpour’s father began using Swiss workshops to manufacture the jewelry he sold in Iran, the company has a reputation for creating sumptuous parures of the highest quality. “Of course you feel it” Shahpour says of the credit crunch. “But high-level pieces like that always keep their value. If people are getting married, we are good.”

In order to accommodate the gift-buying proliclivities of clients who hail from the Gulf region, the company also stocks a reasonably priced selection of glam watches and perfumes, all on display in the Geneva boutique. Situated in a prime location on the city’s famed Rue du Rhône, the store opened in 1995 and was expanded and renovated two years ago into a stylish black-and-white showroom of 200 square meters. Neighbors include practically every major luxury name in the watch and jewelry business, but that doesn’t faze Shahpour.

“We like that we have competitors” he says. “When you go into a garden, you don’t just want to see roses.”