Nefertiti by Nadine Barbey is a holistic healing jewellery collection that she started creating during COVID and debuted six months ago. Since then, the brand has grown exponentially and is now available with Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons in Dubai, Ali bin Ali in Doha, and Bergdorf Goodman launching the brand in their New York store from June. We speak to Nadine Barbey, founder of the marque, about the brand and the collection
Can you tell us about yourself and how did your love for jewellery start?
I was born and raised in Australia. When I was 19, I moved to West Africa and instead of finishing university, I decided to become a diamond sorter. I spent about 4-5 years there, and then I moved to Paris for personal reasons. I had gotten married by then and Bvlgari asked me to come and work with them. They put me through a training in coloured gemstones and that became my first luxury house job; I was about 24 then. I never did anything other than high jewellery from then and my whole career was built on learning how to design and create high jewellery on coloured gemstones.
I was working at Bvlgari for a few years until I was poached by Van Cleef and Arpels to run their high jewellery division. I stayed with Van Cleef and Arpels for about 10 years, making and developing the whole international high jewellery market. I was mostly working on bespoke high jewellery for the very important clients of the company. I would go around the world, organise all the drawings and the sketches, and create jewellery for occasions such as coronations, royal weddings, and so forth. I always knew I wanted to work for myself, and then I decided that this was the time to go independent.
How was the idea of leaving an established brand to start from scratch?
I come from a very entrepreneurial family and have no fear of starting anything from scratch. I come from high jewellery, but this is a completely different jewellery concept. I opened my office next door, at number 16, Place Vendôme, and I started a B2B model because I was more interested in working for the luxury brands. I took two of my best artisans, who worked with only VIP clients on high jewellery with me when I left. They came with me, and we built the brand Nadine Barbey. We also created high jewellery for other high-end jewellery brands – designing and manufacturing.
How did the brand Nefertiti come about?
Business was going well and then I had to take a break as my husband passed and I needed to get past that sorrow. I went into my own journey of healing, and, at some point, I did not want to continue creating high jewellery anymore. I learned a lot about my own healing process and travelled far and wide; I started looking for a deeper meaning to my life and I started learning a lot from the indigenous people of this world. I learned about the science of healing, vibrational frequencies, the physics behind it, and holistic medicine. Though I wanted to leave jewellery making, some of the elders advised me not to, as through this business I would create something that will heal people. I had learned everything about vibrational frequencies, how they work in crystal gems and stones, and Nefertiti was born.
You are incorporating holistic healing into the jewellery?
Exactly; all the stones in this collection are natural. There is no treatment, no reconstituted materials, no resin – everything is made from natural resources of the highest quality, I only use ‘D’ or ‘E’ quality colour diamonds, ‘VS1’ or ‘VS2’ from Iran or Arizona, as these are from places with a very high resonance. It really helped that I was into sourcing earlier as these are a lot harder to source. It is actually more difficult to source the turquoise and the lapis lazuli I use, which is ‘AAA’ quality, than it is to source my diamonds. These are more expensive than the ‘D’ or ‘E’ coloured diamonds. I use my eye for high jewellery, my technical skills and creativity to build a jewellery collection that uses applied science and physics to create a product that has a resonant frequency at different resonant frequencies, because I make different combinations that work at different levels.
How does the resonance frequency work exactly?
Each stone has a different frequency and affects us differently. Every human body has energy; when something’s off, or when you’re sad, the frequency is low. A broken heart can take us to a lower frequency; we need those lower frequencies to learn how to gravitate towards light again. When something is really wrong, you can get a stomach-ache because of an anxiety attack. That stomach-ache is not going to go away until you realign yourself in terms of releasing the trauma or the source of fear. Your spirit will know what you need intuitively, so you will gravitate to what you need to realign. A customer who’s coming to look at a bangle has got three choices – blue, red, or green. That person may move towards a red and black one, and this means that they need to ground themselves, to find the balance in themselves. Someone else may need to be on a higher frequency.
