Diamonds and gold adorn the world's most expensive COVID-19 mask
Amid the chaos and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, a jeweler has designed a gold protective mask studded with diamonds, touted as the world’s most expensive face covering at $1.5 million.
Among the mask’s key components:
—250 grams of pure 18k gold
—3,608 natural black and white diamonds weighing about 210 carats
—A slot to insert a disposable N-99 mask which filters out airborne particulates and provides protection from COVID-19
The mask is the creation of Yvel, the Israeli luxury jewelry maker based near Jerusalem. It was commissioned by a Los Angeles businessman and art collector who has been a longtime friend and customer of company owner Isaac Levy.
The mask is the creation of Yvel, the Israeli luxury jewelry maker based near Jerusalem. It was commissioned by a Los Angeles businessman and art collector who has been a longtime friend and customer of company owner Isaac Levy.
Yvel, which will soon open a store along tony Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, has other U.S. locations in Boca Raton, New York and Aspen, Colo. The mask will be on display in Palm Beach when the new store opens.
Yvel entrusted the project to 25 of its top artisans and diamond setters. It required, Levy said, “an intensive production process to ensure the mask was compliant to safety regulations and could be completed on time,” which was before the end of this year.
Levy declined to identify his client. But in a telephone interview Wednesday, he said the customer came up with the idea as a way to help the company navigate the downturn caused by the pandemic economy.
The project is a way “to help support Israeli industry as well as Yvel’s 150 employees in Israel and the United States during the pandemic,” he said.
Those employees, most of whom are Jewish immigrants from 23 countries, will receive portions of the $1.5 million to help make up earnings lost during the pandemic.
The company operates a trade school near its factory that educates and trains immigrants from Ethiopia who first migrated to Israel in the 1990s. Three of the 25 who worked on the mask project are graduates of the Megemeria School of Jewelry & Art, which is near Yvel’s factory on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
On Dec. 10, the first day of Hanukkah, Levy said, “we’re going to divide all of the profits we have made from this diamond mask and we’re going to give to each and every Yvel member a check.”
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