VelvetJewels was founded in 2009 by Iliana Stergiou, a third-generation goldsmith from Ioannina, and her business partner Konstantinos Roussos, a gemologist who trained at the GIA in Carlsbad and spent six years buying coloured stones for a Geneva auction house. They met at a sapphire auction in Bangkok in 2007 — Iliana was buying for a Greek house that was about to fold; Konstantinos was bidding against her on a 4-carat Ceylon cushion. They split the lot at the bar afterwards and decided, by the third glass of wine, that Athens needed a jeweller who would put serious unheated coloured stones into bold, wearable settings instead of safe diamond solitaires. They opened in October 2009 in a four-room converted townhouse on Skoufa Street, Kolonaki, with two benches, one safe, and €38,000