Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/67043
partners in crime Julie Nerenberg Block, left, and Laurie Davis in Davis's store. laurie davis & julie nerenberg block FAUX DIAMONDS ARE THESE GIRLS' BEST FRIENDS. by elle eichinger L aurie Davis, owner of vintage store Lulu's at the Belle Kay, had a pre- dicament of lustrous proportions: After growing dependent on a brand of costume-jewelry cleaner to polish the hard-to-find, impossible-to- replace pieces she carries in her store, she found it had been discontinued. "You cannot clean costume jewelry in just anything," insists Davis. Using a fine-jewelry cleaner on pieces with rhinestones, faux gold, and Lucite can ruin them. Davis wouldn't dream of dousing high-end costume jewelry designed by the likes of Iradj Moini and Larry Vrba in anything but the right product. So she took matters into her own hands, contacted longtime client (and vintage- jewelry aficionado) Julie Nerenberg Block, and Jewelry Revive was born. In the beginning, Davis sent what little she had left of the previous cleaner to her sister, a chemistry teacher in Boston, so she could break down the formula. "The original idea was to make it ourselves," Nerenberg Block says. "We tried—bad idea. We decided we had to do this right." After a yearlong process of developing and tweaking the formula, finding a manufacturer (local Schaumburg-based Tri Sect) and packaging (Nerenberg 68 michiganavemag.com Block wrote the copy for the label), the duo launched Jewelry Revive in the spring—and it was successful right away. "We'd only been live for two days, and I was getting orders from California, New York, and Massachusetts," says Davis. "I don't even know how people were finding us!" Most likely, their customer based has cropped up out of pure necessity, as Jewelry Revive fills a gaping hole in the costume-jewelry market. While it doesn't occur to many people to clean their costume jewelry, it's an important step for a jewelry collector. "I love flea markets and vintage shows, but places like that are dirty," Nerenberg Block says. "Or, say you go to an estate sale; those pieces have been sitting in someone's attic for a long time—they're dusty, and if they've been worn, they've collected oils from the neck." Although the product is currently sold at Lulu's and online at jewelry revive.com, Davis says, "Our goals are big. We want to be in major depart- ment stores like Target. We want to make a big impact here in Chicago, and hopefully, within a year, we'll be on home-shopping networks like QVC." That is, if they can keep Jewelry Revive in stock. MA photography by heather talbert; hair and makeup by frances tsalas for chicagoemergingartists.com