What Rose Gold is and Why We Can Expect it to Stick Around for Some Time
Between 2010 and 2020, rose gold has come back with a vengeance and is now used across all the decorative Arts: architecture, furniture, fashion and jewellery. To better understand rose gold, the author invites to look at its origins, its cultural meaning and speculates about on of the possible reasons for its comeback.
WHAT IS ROSE GOLD?
Gold is called a noble metal because its atoms do practically not bind with other materials. That makes it biocompatible and untarnishable, which is perfect for objects intended to be worn in direct contact with the skin.
In its purest form, at 99.99 % or 24 karat (24/24), gold is extremely ductile: you can gently hit an ingot with a hammer and it will keep flattening and stretching without tearing.
In order to make gold less ductile, goldsmiths either add silver or copper when they melt it. Silver will make the resulting alloy look whiter, white copper will make it look redder. As long as there is 75% (18K) of gold in the mix, the alloy keeps all the chemical characteristic of gold.
In order to create 18K rose gold, you simply melt together 75% of gold and 25% of copper.
WHY DO CONSUMERS WANT ROSE GOLD?
You might be surprised, but rose gold was quite popular in Western countries in the 1960s.
Image source: BespokeUnit.com
I haven’t looked into the reasons why, but the fact remains that the colour slowly went out of style and by the 1980s it was superseded by yellow gold. On the other hand, I have an explanation as to why it is back in fashion.
By the time I took my position as designer at Longines in 2007, the Subprime Crisis had been put into motion and the People’s Republic of China had made a few changes to their policies that suddenly made it easier for Chinese citizens to acquire luxury goods.
This was a heaven sent for the luxury industry because it meant that as sales were free falling in traditional markets, China had suddenly appeared on the map as a market ready for takeover.
An interesting aspect of Chinese culture is that red is the colour of good fortune. So when distributors asked luxury brands to make products in rose gold (the closest thing to red), they were more than happy to oblige.
As a consequence, I saw the whole Longines catalogue introduce rose gold references and ultimately switch all new production of gold pieces to rose within a few year.
Brands like Longines managed to double their sales over the course of six years, with China weighting more than half in the balance.
When it comes to marketing, to a certain extent people buy what you advertise, so by showing more images of rose gold products, brands managed to make the colour popular with Western consumers as well.
What also contributed to reinforce the popularity of rose metal were the advances made in surface coating and bronze machining: What’s Old is New Again: 9 Watches with Bronze Cases.
In the 1990s, gold plating was slowly replaced by a titanium based surface hardening process called PVD (physical vapour deposition). PVD originated in the heavy industry and it was originally used to harden the tips of drilling tools. The process consists of “spaying” a titanium based compound and letting it create a deposit on the surface.
Mixing the composition of metals had the effect of changing the colour of the deposit, so at some point watchmakers showed interest in using the yellow gold PVD colour to substitute the century old galvanic plating. It also helps that the PVD deposit creates a harder surface, so a PVD coating will last much longer than a gold coating.
With the rising trend for rose gold, watchmakers gradually switched to the rose hue of PVD coating, which is a little more difficult to keep stable, as it tends to darken after exposure to heat and humidity.
Rose gold has also picked up with the fashion industry (high end and low end), so it is likely to stick around for some time…
