Gold and diamond statement jewels shine at Couture Design Awards

The strongest jewelry at Couture was not delicate, and that was the point. At the Encore Theater in Las Vegas, judges rewarded pieces that used gold with conviction, from Hiba Husayni’s Art Deco ring in two-tone 18-karat yellow and blackened white gold to a transformable high-jewelry piece built around a 36.89-carat fancy intense yellow diamond.

The 2026 Couture Design Awards, presented during The Couture Show at Wynn Las Vegas, made a clear argument for statement-making design. A five-person panel of two retailers, two editors and one fellow designer judged 12 categories on design, craftsmanship and salability, while two additional honors were voted on by attendees. Couture director Gannon Brousseau said the event recognizes “the best in design” and the “hard work and brilliant creativity” of leading designers.

Husayni, the designer behind Zahn-Z, won her second consecutive Couture Design Award with Big Zaha Art Deco, which took Best in Diamonds Below $40,000 Retail. The ring distilled the current appetite for archival references into something wearable rather than costume-like: a 0.89-carat old European-cut diamond sits at the center, ringed by old European-cut, single-cut and pear-cut diamonds. Its two-tone construction, in 18-karat yellow and blackened white gold, gave the geometry real contrast and kept the diamond work from feeling over-embellished.

If Big Zaha Art Deco showed how gold can frame a diamond with sharper lines, Ashna Mehta’s Gilded Bloom haute bag bijoux pushed the category into more theatrical territory. The piece centered on a 36.89-carat fancy intense yellow diamond surrounded by kite- and rose-cut diamonds in 18-karat white gold, and it could be worn as a brooch, pendant or bag charm. That kind of transformable construction matters because it turns a high-jewelry object into a small wardrobe of its own, and it is exactly the sort of clever engineering judges tend to remember.

The awards also gave Design Atelier a platform, and Itä made the most of it. The brand won Best in Below $10,000 Retail with the Yarí İznik Whirl ring, a new version of its Yarí Whirl ring inspired by İznik, Turkey, and the city’s tile-making tradition. In a class that included 17 new brands, the win suggested that even at the entry level, the most persuasive jewelry still carries a story, a point of view and a disciplined use of material.

The night began by honoring Mildred Marcano of Reinhold Jewelers with the first Jan Mohr Award for Excellence and ended with Beth Anne Bonanno of The Gems Project receiving the Cindy Edelstein Award. Between those bookends, the message was unmistakable: in a market crowded with generic gold jewelry, it is the pieces with bold yellow gold, Art Deco lines, transformable form and emotionally legible design that still break through.