Gold Is Getting More Expensive. What Does That Mean for Your Jewellery?

Gold has become one of the biggest conversations in the jewellery industry.

Not because we've suddenly developed an interest in commodity markets, but because when the price of the material your industry depends upon rises dramatically, eventually somebody has to make a decision about who absorbs it.

The manufacturer?

The brand?

The retailer?

The customer?

Or, perhaps less visibly, the product itself?

Across the jewellery industry, soaring precious-metal prices are forcing exactly those conversations. Professional Jeweller dedicated a major feature this year to how rising prices are reshaping everything from manufacturing and retail pricing to stock management and consumer behaviour, while the National Association of Jewellers has issued guidance to businesses navigating volatile precious-metal costs.

For a young jewellery brand launching its second chapter in the middle of all this, it's made us think very carefully about what we're prepared to change.

And, perhaps more importantly, what we're not.

Gold Has Become Very Expensive

This isn't a hypothetical problem.

The price of gold has climbed dramatically, creating higher costs throughout jewellery manufacturing. As Queensmith founder Brett Afshar explained earlier this year, rising bullion prices flow through casting, bench work, inventory and wholesale pricing, leaving businesses deciding how much they can absorb and how much ultimately needs to reach the customer.

The industry is adapting.

Some jewellers are introducing more accessible gold alloys. Birmingham retailer Diamond Heaven, for example, told Professional Jeweller that it had introduced 9ct gold into its customised designs as part of its response to rising gold and gemstone prices. Raw Pearls similarly launched a 9ct gold pearl and diamond collection specifically intended to offer retailers more accessible price points as gold prices rise.

Others are looking beyond gold altogether. Pandora introduced platinum-plated jewellery this year, explicitly describing the move as a way of diversifying its precious-metal offering and reducing commodity exposure.

None of these decisions are inherently wrong.

That's important.

Jewellery exists at different price points, for different customers, with different expectations. Brands have to make commercial decisions that allow them to survive.

But those decisions have made us examine our own.

When Costs Rise, Something Has to Give

There are only so many levers a jewellery brand can pull.

You can increase the retail price.

You can accept a smaller margin.

You can redesign a piece to use less precious metal.

You can change the metal.

You can change the construction.

And, with plated jewellery, you can reconsider the specification underneath the gold.

Some of those changes can be perfectly sensible. Others can alter what the customer is actually buying in ways that aren't immediately obvious from a photograph on a website.

And that's where we think transparency matters.

Because two pieces of jewellery can both be described as "gold plated" while being fundamentally different products underneath.

The colour might look similar on day one.

That doesn't mean they have been made to the same standard.

So What Happens at Nudie?

This question became particularly relevant while developing Forme and Juicy, our second major launch since Nudie began.

Our manufacturing costs have changed.

Our standards haven't.

For our gold jewellery, we are continuing with a minimum 2.5-microns layer of 18ct recycled gold.

We could have looked at that specification and asked:

How little gold can we use?

Instead, we've kept asking the question Nudie was built around:

What specification do we actually want someone to wear?

Those are very different starting points.

We're not interested in making a piece look identical on the day you open the box if the compromise only becomes apparent months later.

We would rather design around the standard than design the standard around the price.

And Then There's the Metal Underneath

One of the most interesting decisions we've made with Forme and Juicy is one that might initially sound counterintuitive.

We deliberately chose brass.

Not because we were searching for the cheapest possible material underneath the gold, but because Nudie is supposed to be a skin-first jewellery brand.

Sterling silver is often positioned as the automatic premium choice for gold-plated jewellery. 

For lots of people, that's an excellent option.

But not everyone can wear silver.

And if every supposedly "better" piece of accessible gold jewellery is built around a sterling-silver base, we're quietly excluding the women who can't.

That mattered to us.

So rather than treating the base metal as something to hide underneath a sufficiently lovely layer of gold, we made it part of the design decision.

Nudie gold jewellery use a brass base deliberately.

It gives us another material route within Nudie for customers who cannot wear silver, while still allowing us to maintain the gold-plating standard we expect from the pieces.

Because skin-first design shouldn't mean deciding there is one universally "best" material and using it for everybody.

Brass Doesn't Mean Lower Standards

There's an uncomfortable hierarchy in jewellery marketing where certain material names are used almost as shorthand for quality.

Solid gold: good.

Sterling silver: good.

Brass: cheap.

Except material alone doesn't tell you whether a piece of jewellery is well made.

You need to know the entire specification.

What is the base metal?

What is touching the skin?

How thick is the plating?

What is the gold purity?

How has the piece been tested?

How is it constructed?

What happens when it's actually worn?

At Nudie, our finished jewellery is independently tested through Birmingham Assay Office's AnchorCert Pro programme as part of our hypoallergenic standard.

That's considerably more useful to us than choosing a material simply because its name looks more expensive in a product description.

Could We Just Move to 9ct Solid Gold?

This is perhaps the interesting question.

As gold-plated and vermeil jewellery becomes more expensive to manufacture, the gap between high-quality demi-fine jewellery and entry-level solid gold becomes interesting.

The jewellery industry is already responding with more 9ct products and designs engineered to keep precious-metal weight, and therefore price, under control.

There is absolutely a place for that.

But there is also a trade-off that doesn't get discussed enough.

A solid-gold piece at an accessible price may need to become smaller, finer, hollow or lighter to get there. That's not inherently inferior either. It simply creates a different product.

For Nudie, the question isn't:

How do we get the words "solid gold" into the product description?

It's:

What material allows us to make this particular design properly, to the standard we want, at a price our customer can realistically wear?

Sometimes the answer to that question may change.

Right now, for Forme and Juicy, it hasn't.

Quality Is a Series of Decisions

That's perhaps the thing rising gold prices have made clearest to me as a founder.

Quality isn't one material.

It isn't one hallmark.

And it certainly isn't one adjective in a product description.

It's hundreds of relatively boring decisions that customers will probably never know you made.

How thick should this be?

What should sit against the skin?

Can we make this lighter without making it weaker?

Could this clasp be easier to use?

What happens when it gets wet?

What happens after somebody has worn it 100 times rather than once?

And occasionally:

Gold has become considerably more expensive. Are we still going to use the same amount?

For Forme and Juicy, our answer was yes.

We Won't Pretend That Doesn't Have Consequences

Maintaining specifications while raw-material costs rise isn't a magic trick.

Some costs can be absorbed. Some efficiencies can be found elsewhere. Sometimes retail prices eventually have to change.

We're a business. Pretending otherwise wouldn't make us a more conscientious one.

But what we can decide is where we're prepared to compromise.

And there are certain things we don't think customers should discover were quietly reduced because commodity markets became inconvenient.

If we ever change a Nudie material or specification, I want there to be a reason we can explain.

Not something we're hoping you won't notice.

Forme & Juicy: Same Standards, New Chapter

This autumn, Nudie Chapter 2 arrives with Forme and Juicy.

They're more playful, more sculptural and, in places, quite different from the Maiden collection that launched Nudie.

But underneath all of that, the philosophy hasn't changed.

We're still designing with skin in mind.

We're still obsessing over details most sensible people probably wouldn't.

And we're still trying to make fewer, better pieces that can earn their place in your jewellery box.

The price of gold may be changing jewellery.

It doesn't have to change what we stand for.

Sources / further reading

Professional Jeweller: Rising gold prices create a delicate balancing act, Professional Jeweller: June 2026 precious metals feature, NAJ guidance on precious-metal price volatility, Diamond Heaven adapting its offer, Raw Pearls introducing an accessible 9ct collection.