Damiani is an Italian jewelry company founded in 1924 by Enrico Grassi Damiani in
ValenzaValenza is a comune in the Province of Alessandria in the Italian region Piedmont, located about 80 km east of Turin and about 11 km north of Alessandria.-History:...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
. Strongly influenced by the beauty of
Art DecoArt Deco was a popular international art design movement from 1925 until the 1940s, affecting the decorative arts such as architecture, interior design, and industrial design, as well as the visual arts such as fashion, painting, the graphic arts, and film...
styles, Enrico designed and produced fine jewelry which quickly became renowned. He became the personal jeweler of influential families.
Enrico's son, Damiano Grassi Damiani began the company in 1924, and introduced new marketing and advertising strategies.
Damiani is an Italian jewelry company founded in 1924 by Enrico Grassi Damiani in
ValenzaValenza is a comune in the Province of Alessandria in the Italian region Piedmont, located about 80 km east of Turin and about 11 km north of Alessandria.-History:...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
. Strongly influenced by the beauty of
Art DecoArt Deco was a popular international art design movement from 1925 until the 1940s, affecting the decorative arts such as architecture, interior design, and industrial design, as well as the visual arts such as fashion, painting, the graphic arts, and film...
styles, Enrico designed and produced fine jewelry which quickly became renowned. He became the personal jeweler of influential families.
Enrico's son, Damiano Grassi Damiani began the company in 1924, and introduced new marketing and advertising strategies. Damiani, for example, was the first company to introduce Certificates of Authenticity for jewelry pieces showing the details included in the jewelry, for example, the number of carats.
The family business's Vice-President is Silvia, the granddaughter of Damiani. The company is also run by her mother, Gabriella, and her siblings, Guido and Giorgio.
Lawsuit
Brad PittWilliam Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. He has been cited as one of the world's most attractive men, a label that entices the media to report on his off-screen life...
and
Jennifer AnistonJennifer Joanna Aniston is an American actress. She became famous in the 1990s for her role as Rachel Green in the US sitcom Friends, a role for which she won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award....
filed a $50 million
lawsuitA lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have received damages from a defendant's actions, seeks a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
against a jewelry designer that began selling imitations of their wedding bands, which were supposedly "one of a kind". The couple claims they had an agreement with Damiani International that the company would never reproduce the wedding bands or the
engagement ringIn Western tradition, an engagement ring is a ring worn by a person indicating his or her engagement to be married. Conventionally, the ring is presented as a betrothal gift by a man to his prospective bride while he proposes marriage or directly after she accepts his marriage proposal...
(designed by Pitt). Damiani reportedly sold "Brad and Jennifer knockoffs" and sold them on the Internet and at Damiani dealerships using the couple’s images to sell the product.
That dispute has been settled and Pitt will now design a line of jewelry for the company and Aniston will model it in ads. Their wedding bands were based on an idea of Pitt’s. They were white gold and were engraved with "Jen 2000" (his) and "Brad 2000" (hers). The rings had 10 and 20 diamonds embedded in them respectively. Damiani International states, "Mr. Pitt will design an exclusive jewelry collection for Damiani, and Ms. Aniston will be featured in an international advertising campaign that will run in a number of countries throughout the world, with the exception of North America."
The statement was confirmed by Pitt’s publicist. In exchange for Pitt designing an exclusive line for the company and Aniston modeling for the ads, Damiani will stop selling copies of Pitt and Aniston’s wedding rings. It has been reported that Pitt and friends were collaborating on a clothing line, but Pitt’s camp has denied that rumor.
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