Meet Sydney’s go-to private jeweller
After adding ready-to-wear collections to custom orders, Olivia Bond’s business has outgrown its space and is moving to the Trust Building’s top floor.
Inside Sydney’s Trust Building, above the understated opulence of the Hermès flagship, is a floor filled with the city’s most prestigious independent jewellers. This is where you come – when money is no object – for a bespoke engagement ring, a tennis bracelet to mark a significant milestone, a signet ring to pass on to family.
Olivia Bond’s business has been in this rarefied space for three years, and she’s already grown so large that she’s moving up – metaphorically and literally – to bigger premises.
“We opened this space during lockdown,” says Bond, “and it became a haven for me. I could come and escape here.” With three children under 10, having somewhere to go was a luxury at the time, she says.
Pieces from Olivia Bond’s Twist collection featuring diamonds, emeralds and sapphires set in gold.
She has been in the jewellery game since 2013, but it was during the COVID-19 lockdown that her brand began to heat up. Up to that point she had focused on bespoke, made-to-order pieces. But with more time on her hands, she turned her attention to ready-to-wear collections.
“I made myself a scallop necklace,” she says, pointing to a diamond pendant at her neck bordered with a delicate scallop edging, giving it a floral outline. “People kept asking where they could get it.”
It’s now one of her bestsellers, and a signature of the Bond brand. Ditto the Puffy Heart collection, a nod to Y2K nostalgia. “They went a bit berserk,” says Bond. “I think we all remember having something like this as a teenager. It’s a fun design. I have my diamonds, but the amount of times I reach for this over my precious jewellery . . . I can’t even tell you.”
Olivia Bond: “I like things that are sleek and minimal. Fussy isn’t me.” Dominic Lorrimer
Bond still takes custom orders, and says she is never bored by even the most quotidian of engagement rings. “Most people do want a solitaire or a three-stone ring”, she acknowledges. But her own collections are growing apace. She plans for two to three a year, though that can change depending on how busy she is.
Keeping the business lean – it’s just Bond, her general manager and a team of contractors for various services – allows her to be nimble and respond to customer demands, making the ready-to-wear almost a hybrid of custom and her own designs.
“When people request things, I can respond quickly. I don’t have to funnel people into liking things I’ve made.” Her latest collection, Twist, was inspired by the idea of tying a piece of string around your finger to remember something. The pieces look soft and pliable, belying their solidity and durability. “I like things that are sleek and minimal,” says Bond. “Fussy isn’t me.”
She might not have been a jeweller at all. She studied to be a speech pathologist in her home town of Perth. But after graduating, she moved to London, where she got a job at Sotheby’s on the valuation counter, and fell in love with jewellery. She also fell in love with her now husband, investment manager Jeremy Bond, grandson of the late Alan Bond.
The couple moved back to Australia in 2009 and here, Bond was certified as a gemologist and diamond grader. Family connections run deep – her paternal grandmother was a gemologist, too.
Bond in her Sydney CBD space. Dominic Lorrimer
Bond is now seeing growth in the US, South-East Asia and the UK, and is planning a series of trunk shows abroad (as well as locally, in Melbourne and Brisbane).
She still loves meeting with clients, and speaks excitedly of the space her interior designer friend Tamsin Johnson has created on the top floor of the Trust Building. “You want to be able to sit down with people,” she says. “It’s a big investment and people want to relax and take their time.”
Though her first client was Eileen “Big Red” Bond, most of her customers are Millennial women (“they love yellow gold and diamonds”) and Bond says there is a growing demand for jewellers like herself – young and female.
A tourmaline bead Half/Half necklace.
“I think women want to know they are working with someone who understands what they want,” she says. “And men who are buying for women want that, too.
“Jewellery used to be dominated by the big brands, and family businesses that had been around for decades. Having this new cohort of female jewellers makes sense: women like coming to women of their own generation. You can trust their taste.”
And trust, after all, is everything.
The December issue of AFR Magazine is out on Friday, November 24 inside The Australian Financial Review.
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