Los Gatos jewelry store rolls out red carpet for designer to the stars

Jessica Alba, Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, Vanessa Williams and Sofia Vergara have all appeared on the red carpet looking drop dead gorgeous, right down to earrings and necklaces from jewelry designer Erica Courtney’s signature collection.

Courtney is bringing her Drop Dead Gorgeous collection to Blacy’s Jewelry in Los Gatos on April 26-27.

Jeanette Blacy has known Courtney for 30 years, and began by carrying her silver cross designs.

“Erica first popularized the concept of stacking silver rings,” says Blacy. “I used to carry her diamond necklaces, but now she specializes in sourcing beautiful high-end colored stones to create very elaborate earrings, pendants and rings that are very spectacular and one of a kind. We’re so thrilled she’s doing her first trunk show with us!”

Courtney’s career started quite by accident in 1984. She was out for a walk with her mother in her native Texas, wearing a pair of cheap sunglasses she had embellished with rhinestones from a broken necklace, when a passerby asked where she’d them. Her quick-witted mom said, “Oh, my daughter is a jewelry designer; she can make you a pair.”

“That was the furthest thing from my mind,” Courtney says. “I didn’t think of myself as a designer: that was the realm of Paloma Picasso. But I needed a job.”

With her mother’s encouragement, she bought a bunch of sunglasses wholesale and called Swarovski to bulk-buy crystals. Soon she was making more and more elaborate pieces for herself, and people would always want copies.

“My jewelry grew up with me,” Courtney explains. “My work began with a fun handmade look: I was just designing for myself, and other people loved it. But as I grew up, the designs got more sophisticated.”

Eventually, she moved to LA and found herself designing jewelry for celebrities. She credits a jeweler she met there for upping her game. “That jeweler rocked my world. It changed my life, and there was no going back. From then on, I went for an uber-fabulous look, at first with diamonds and then with exotic stones. I live for these stones!”

Courtney’s name is now synonymous with red carpet glamour, but it’s her love of stones that takes her all over the world with her field gemologist friend Vincent Pardieu, going deep into mines, meeting the miners and learning about their lives.

Her love of travel and the hunt for rare and gorgeous stones has led her to places as diverse as Brazil, Tanzania, Thailand, Germany, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. Every research trip yields something new, and the more she learns, the more she realizes how much she doesn’t know.

“Literally, Sri Lanka is one big sapphire mine,” she says. “If the place were to blow up, it would rain down sapphires for years.”

She says sapphires and rubies are really hot right now, especially Ceylon sapphires. She recently purchased a two-carat Kashmir sapphire for $2 million. Burmese rubies are also in demand.

At gem shows, she discovered peridot and, in particular, Pakistani peridot, which is 20 times as expensive. She knew she was all in the day she bought $20,000 worth of spessartite garnets, known for their orange to red glow.

“That was a lot, but you have to have it all so you can do rings and earrings,” Courtney says. “People want sets.

“I always pick the most fabulous and beautiful stones. It’s a love thing. I don’t care how much it costs.”

Visit Blacy’s Fine Jewelers at 51 University Ave. Los Gatos. For more information about Erica Courtney, visit https://www.ericacourtney.com.