A&G

Asprey, the very up-market London jeweller long favoured by oil-rich Arabs, heiresses and anyone else with money they had not earned, has reopened its flagship store after what its owners claim was a £50 million ($A131 million) refit.

The Bond Street store in the heart of London's designer fashion district had been reduced to a third of its size during the refit, which took about two years.

Asprey is old Europe, but has strong connections with new money from Asia. Silas Chou, a mainland Chinese citizen based in Hong Kong, is a co-owner. His partner, Lawrence Stroll, is a London-based Canadian.

They bought Asprey & Garrard in 2000. (A 40 per cent stake was sold on to Edgar Bronfman jnr, whose family sold Seagram to Vivendi of France in 2000 for $US34 billion ($A48.7 billion) and another 10 per cent went to the TAG Group that formerly owned Tag Heuer watches.)

The pair split the two companies and Jade Jagger, Mick's daughter, was made creative director at Garrard, which formerly was best known as the Crown jewellers. Ms Jagger added a bar to Garrard's and planned to introduce computer games and internet access. The fashion media lapped it up.

It was nonsense of course. Garrard is a jewellery shop, not a video arcade. On my visit, it was empty and no computer games were in sight.

Chou and Stroll have a background in developing and leveraging labels. Chou had been co-owner and co-chairman of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation, the Hong Kong-based, US-focused jeans and fragrance label. Stroll had served as the other chairman.

Chou and his family also own around 80 per cent of Novel Denim Holdings, a denim apparel maker that supplies clothes and fabric to The Gap and Tommy Hilfiger, among others.

And last year, Chou and Stroll bought an 85 per cent stake in the languishing US designer label Michael Kors, with big hopes of reviving and extending it.

But Asprey today represents an astonishing retail space. The renowned architect Norman Foster remodelled it. Hong Kong's new airport and the huge, spectacular courtyard at the British Museum are among his other recent works.

The old store was gutted. The interior now gives way to a large, enclosed courtyard with a spiral, marble staircase. The front of the store is reserved for jewellery but rear rooms and upstairs are for handbags, clothing, stationery items, crockery and the like.

But the architecture is the star.

There's a danger in this. "It is not just for looking at - tell all your friends to come and buy," Chou, always the Chinese trader, is quoted as saying.

Celebrities, aristocrats and others of unearned greatness attended a magnificent opening last week, many in diamond necklaces lent to them for the occasion. Read More…