Carat1,300 brands and a centenary: Vicenzaoro opens Hall 2
Vicenzaoro September runs 4 to 8 September with about 1,300 brands from 38 countries, buyers from more than 130, the new Hall 2 in full use and T.Gold moved on site. CIBJO's centenary congress sits inside it.
§1A date and a floor plan.
The next real test of the trade's summer numbers has a date and a floor plan. Vicenzaoro September runs from 4 to 8 September at Fiera di Vicenza, with roughly 1,300 exhibiting brands from 38 countries and buyers expected from more than 130, on figures the Italian Exhibition Group gave JCK on 13 July. The show was reported close to sold out in late May, more than three months ahead. Two structural changes land at once: the new Hall 2, a two-storey central hub connected by covered walkways, is fully operational for the first time, and T.Gold has moved inside the expo centre grounds.
The T.Gold move is the one manufacturers should read. The machinery and technology section for precious-metal production has run as a separate proposition and now sits in Hall 4 alongside the finished goods, which puts casting, laser and setting equipment in the same building as the brands that buy the output. Jewellery Outlook reported both the integration and the Hall 2 timetable on 31 July, confirming through interviews that neither has slipped. For a show that has spent three years arguing it represents the whole supply chain rather than a display of Italian goldsmithing, this is the edition where the claim gets tested against a floor plan.
§2A hundredth birthday with a rulebook.
Sharing the site is a hundredth birthday with a rulebook attached. CIBJO, the World Jewellery Confederation, holds its centenary congress in Vicenza from 4 to 7 September, a century after its founding in 1926. The congress that writes the Blue Books turns one hundred in the hall next door. Its Assembly of Delegates and sectoral commissions meet there, and amendments to the Blue Books, the international standards covering diamonds, coloured stones and pearls, are introduced at exactly these sessions. The scheduled agenda covers the state of the diamond industry, lab-grown diamonds, the supply chain, pearls and coloured gemstones.
The congress that writes the Blue Books turns one hundred in the hall next door.
§3Not ceremonial this year.
That agenda is not ceremonial this year. Russia's Resolution 657 comes into force on 1 September, three days before the congress opens, banning the word diamond and its derivatives for synthetics sold there and requiring weight in grams. CIBJO's own president has been arguing publicly for synthetic over lab-grown as the correct term. A standards body meets to debate nomenclature in the same week a G20 economy stops waiting for it, which changes what the room is deciding. Delegates are no longer choosing between a rule and no rule. They are choosing between a global rule and a set of national ones.
A standards congress is where the lab-grown naming fight gets settled, and Russia has already moved, which means Vicenzaoro in September is the most consequential week on the calendar between now and Hong Kong. Buyers should go for the price discovery, because September is the first hall since the July tariff schedule where Belgian, Botswanan and Indian goods sit within walking distance of each other and get quoted against the same budget. Manufacturers should go for Hall 4. Everyone else should watch what the commissions write down, because that language will be on labels for a decade.
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Moscow strikes the word diamond from synthetic labels.