NYC’s Godmother of Diamonds can help you nail the ‘mob wife’ aesthetic
She’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.
Kerri Lavine, a fast-talking, cigar-smoking 62-year-old Midtown jewelry dealer has become an unlikely TikTok star, calling herself the “Godmother of Diamonds.” Dripping in $100,000 worth of jewelry, her nails done in a perfect French manicure and her brunette bob heavily teased, she doles out advice on jewelry store negotiations, how to spot fakes and the difference between natural and lab-grown sparklers to her 170,000 followers.
“I’ve been doing this 43 years – I’m the boss,” said Lavine, who co-owns Diamanti NYC in the Diamond District.
“It’s not a wig – this is my real hair,” added Lavine who perfectly embodies the mob-wife aesthetic of the moment and conjures Denise Borino-Quinn’s “Ginny Sacrimoni” on “The Sopranos.”
“I haven’t changed my hairstyle in 50 years,” she added. “There’s hairspray. I support hairspray companies. This is just who I am.”
The Whitestone, Queens, mother-of-two landed on the nickname “Godmother of Diamonds” 20 years ago when a friend snapped a photo of her puffing on a cigar and holding a glass of cognac at a wedding.
“I said to myself, ‘you look like the Godfather in that picture, but you’re a woman.’ I said, ‘Oh, Godmother of Diamonds.’ That’s how I branded myself,” she said.
She first went viral in January 2023 for her no-nonsense negotiation skills as she sold 2-carat diamond earrings to influencer @MosesTheJeweler, who has more than 600,000 TikTok followers.
“I got something great for you … beautiful pair of studs. I want $4,300 for the pair – 1-carat each,” she commanded to the fellow jewelry lover who countered with $3,500. They eventually settled at $3,800.
She was instantly flooded with messages from fans asking her business advice and decided to start having her co-workers film her in action and post videos on TikTok.
Now, fans from Texas, England, Ireland and Australia flock to her store to watch her in action – slinging 10 carat diamond engagement rings, gushing over a 29-carat heart shaped yellow diamond, negotiating sales with neighboring dealers on rare Rolexes and making sure all that sparkles is real.
“I can tell a diamond is fake usually by looking at the facet junctions,” she noted.
But, Lavine isn’t all about getting the best deal for herself.
In December, she gave away 2-carat diamond studs to a tourist in Rockefeller Center after holding a free raffle.
“I’m a giver. It was my birthday in December, I wanted to give someone a gift,” she said. “A wonderful woman won a pair of diamond studs. Those probably would have retailed for $7,000.”
Lavine fell into the diamond biz by accident at 18 while she was a college student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was looking for a gold charm for her grandmother on 47th Street and ended up charming a jewelry store owner with her no-nonsense demeanor.
“The guy said, ‘I love you. I want you to work for me.”
She made her first big sale by age 21 – selling a $25,000 diamond wedding band to a friend.
“I could not believe I made a $25,000 sale. It was 1981,” she told The Post of the stone that today would sell closer to $100,000.
Lavine went on to work for a jeweler in the Diamond District for 30 years and amassed thousands of clients. But, the business shut down during COVID and the partnership went south. So, she and two colleagues, Ron Gill and Enera Ljaljicic, opened Diamanti NYC in 2021.
“They threw us aside,” she said. “It put a fire under my ass.”
Social media has been a big driver of business. Lavine’s last big sale was an emerald cut diamond ring just shy of $100,000 to a couple who found her on TikTok.
“Three years ago I was miserable. Today I’m grateful it happened. “
