The New York Times

August 13, 2005

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How the King of Bling Saved My Marriage
By HARRY HURT III

FIVE days before my 12th wedding anniversary, I raced down Park Avenue, gawking at well-heeled passers-by and talking to myself out loud like a lunatic. I desperately needed to find a present for my wife, Alison, before it was too late. "Good thing she's no math wizard," I muttered in the direction of a duly startled woman in Manolo pumps, cutoff jeans and a cowboy hat.

Alison had been telling people that we had been married for 13 years. I'm sure to her it must seem at least that long, if not far longer; after all, she's been married to me the whole time. But she'd also been saying our anniversary was on Saturday, when it was actually on Sunday. As any heartbroken fool who's ever listened to country music knows all too well, 24 hours can spell the difference between life and death, marriage and D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

I was hoping against hope that the King of Bling, Jacob Arabo, might come to my rescue. Mr. Arabo, a k a Jacob the Jeweler, is known for selling some of the world's gaudiest and most expensive jewelry to pop, rap and hip-hop artists like Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Sean Combs, Kanye West, Elton John, Madonna, Mariah Carey and Ozzy Osbourne - just the crowd my wife keeps begging me to bring home for potluck supper.

I slipped past a pair of muscular men in dark suits with earphones who looked like Secret Service agents and entered Jacob & Company, a converted brownstone at 48 East 57th Street. Designed to resemble the inside of a diamond mine, the interior walls were covered with sheets of channeled white Corian; the temperature felt only a few degrees above freezing.

The publicist for Jacob & Company, Thayer Whipple, escorted me to a V.I.P. room in the back of the store equipped with leather armchairs, a bar stocked with adult beverages and one of the 48 flat-screen TV's installed throughout the premises.

Presently, Mr. Arabo, 40, emerged from an adjacent office that featured a see-through aquarium window. With his short curly black hair, sallow complexion, square jaw and chalk-striped suit, he looked more like a Greek shipping magnate than a Russian Jewish diamond cutter born in Tashkent. But his biography suggests he was predestined to become the King of Bling.

At age 16, two years after moving to America with his parents and four sisters, Mr. Arabo enrolled in a jewelry design class where he showed such prodigious skill that his teachers urged him to strike out on his own after only four months of formal instruction. In 1981, he opened a jewelry design business in a modest booth in the Kaplan Diamond Exchange on the Avenue of the Americas and 47th Street.

In the mid-1990's, Mr. Arabo was "discovered" by Faith Evans, the R&B singer and wife of the late rap star Notorious B.I.G. As Ms. Whipple's press materials noted, "Faith and her husband spawned a sizable buzz throughout the music industry, which resulted in Jacob becoming the go-to guy for jewels." Before relocating to 57th Street last December, he purchased a 75 percent stake in a Swiss watch factory and formed a partnership with DD Manufacturing of Antwerp, Belgium, one of the world's largest diamond suppliers.

I told Mr. Arabo the purpose of my visit. "Don't bring your wife in here," he warned with a wry smile. "It's very dangerous."

Mr. Arabo led me back out to one of the glass-paneled display cases in the front of the store. He swiped a magnetic card in front of the panel; the glass immediately lowered. He reached in and grabbed a 22-carat diamond watch with a face measuring 57 millimeters in diameter that featured a multicolored map of the world and separate sets of hands indicating the hour and minute in five time zones.

"We call this The World Is Yours," Mr. Arabo said, handing me the watch. "It costs $1 million. Other jewelers thought I was losing my mind making it, that I'm going to get stuck with it. But already we have sold four of them."

The World Is Yours watch was so heavy it almost sprained my wrist. I handed it back, and asked Mr. Arabo if he had something a little less costly in his cases. "Our least expensive watch is $5,600," he informed me.

Mr. Arabo went on to confide that his penchant for designing high-priced, flamboyantly colorful jewelry was inspired by his youthful distaste for the merchandise available back in the Soviet Union. "All the stores sold the same jewelry; it was boring," he said. "That's why I started making my own pieces." Then he added with another wry smile: "Of course, I also like designing simple, elegant jewelry for simple, elegant people."

Back in the V.I.P. room, Mr. Arabo held up a pair of six-carat diamond earrings, dangling them in front of my eyes. "They look like floating water drops, don't they?" he said. I nodded, and asked how much. "$220,000," he replied.

I confessed that the pieces I'd seen so far were light-years beyond my means. "Just give me a budget then," Mr. Arabo offered. "I will make your wife something you can afford."

"Sure you will," I muttered to myself as I traipsed out the door and down 57th Street to keep shopping.

The moment I entered Tiffany's, I realized that my brief experience with the King of Bling had already spoiled me. The layout of the famous store reminded me of an airport concourse lined with tacky designer boutiques. The craftsmanship of the jewelry seemed downright shoddy compared with Mr. Arabo's. I frowned at a display of Elsa Peretti gold-wire bangles ranging in price from $800 to $1,200. I turned up my nose at Paloma Picasso's Tanzanite Suite featuring $17,000 earrings and a $45,000 ring.

I hustled across Fifth Avenue to Van Cleef & Arpels, where I found myself gasping for air inside a dainty little carpeted space furnished like my late great-aunt's living room. A very nice woman in a tan suit showed me a swarm of dragonflies and butterflies made of diamonds, gold and mother-of-pearl with prices ranging from $10,000 to $27,500. I politely passed on the bugs, and hurried back outside.

Still reeling from seismic sticker shock, I placed a frantic cellphone call to Ms. Whipple, and told her I would take Mr. Arabo up on his offer to design a present for my wife with two stipulations: First, I needed the merchandise within the next four days, and second, my budget was $2,000. In effect, I was asking Picasso - in this case Pablo, not Paloma - to create a masterpiece with a magic marker and a bar napkin.

Ms. Whipple said that Mr. Arabo would be happy to work within my modest budget, but that he and his wife were flying to Monaco the next evening to attend the annual Red Cross charity ball. "I'll ask if there's something he can do for you before he leaves," she promised.

As it turned out, the King of Bling produced a series of unique creations that spawned both a happy ending - and a potentially expensive new beginning - to my anniversary present pursuit. Last Sunday morning, Alison awoke to find a white envelope with a gold ribbon lying on her pillow. Inside were two pages of Jacob & Company stationery with pencil drawings of seven different styles of earrings sketched and signed by Mr. Arabo. A note from Ms. Whipple advised that my wife could choose whichever style she wanted, and Mr. Arabo would make the earrings upon his return to New York.

"Oh, Bigger, they're beautiful!" Alison exclaimed. "I want all of them." I told her that would not be possible, at least not this year. "That's O.K.," she said with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. "I'll pick one, and then I'll frame Jacob's drawings and hang them on the wall so you'll know what to get me next year."