V Muse Jewelry
duchessofostergotlands:
What do we know about this V Muse place? Seems strange they just popped up and started laying out huge sums of money for tiaras!
I've been researching them because I was wondering the same thing. The were the official jeweler for Le Bal last year too and I had never heard of them before. I looked into them a bit more this year and I found out that they are not an antique/estate jeweler like I thought.
They were founded in 2017 by Alex Fan and Vivian Jia as East Langkun International Culture. They had been collecting items and working with museums in 2009. So they are an art institute and are not selling any of the jewels.
East Langkun is an international culture institution headquartered in Beijing. It is dedicated to the exploration, discover, and protection of artworks worldwide, and is highly reputed by it's achievements in academic research and conservation, cultural exchanged, museum operations, exhibitions and publications
Then in 2018 they went on a huge buying spree spending millions and millions of dollars buying jewelry at auctions. Like seriously the amount of money they spent in that year alone is ridiculous. It's not unusual for rich people to buy a lot of jewelry but usually it's done over a much longer time period. They also usually either hoard it in a vault or loan it to a museum in a dedicated hall with their name really big over the door.
Before they partnered with Le Bal in 2022, they changed their name from East Langkun to V Muse. The websites and inventories are the same. I was confused last year because V Muse keeps calling themselves a brand so I thought they were selling the jewelry.
East Langkun
V Muse
It's a little odd for an art institute to loan items to be worn like this but I enjoy seeing the jewelry worn so I'm not complaining. They also have lots of pictures and information on their website and loan the jewelry to museums and exhibitions. I have no idea where all that money came from but I guess if I suddenly became a billionaire I'd do the same thing.