If you ask me, Miami in March is always a good idea. That’s why, last fall, when the organizers of the JIS show at the Miami Beach Convention Center invited me to the 2026 spring edition, it didn’t take much convincing for me to say yes.
I arrived in the Magic City on Friday, March 6, two days before the show opened. My boyfriend, Jim, and our 7-year-old son, Niko, joined me. Although we’d come from sunny and 72-degree Los Angeles, the balmy Florida weather instantly put us in a vacation mood.
Over the next 36 hours, we got acclimated to the city the old-fashioned way: We partied. Before we left L.A., Jim had done some research and learned there would be a Holi celebration in the city’s Wynwood district on Saturday. I’d always wanted to attend the Hindu festival of colors, and if I couldn’t do it in India, where better than Wynwood with its kaleidoscopic murals as backdrop?
Holi Miami did not disappoint. In fact, it was the perfect prelude to my first day at JIS Spring, where I gravitated to the showcases bursting with color. A mainstay of the spring jewelry calendar, this regional buying show, founded in 1979 as the Jewelers International Showcase, offers trend-forward merchandise that ranges from inexpensive costume styles to gala-worthy fine jewels. I’d attended the bigger fall edition some years back but had never been to JIS Spring.
The organizers had asked me to join a conversation series on the show floor, “On Trend With JIS,” where Jen Cullen Williams, the longtime PR and media manager for JIS’ sister show, JCK Las Vegas, was engaging in chats with various fashion and trend experts. She asked me about the price of gold, which hovered around the $5,100 mark; the dominant gem and color trends I noted at the Tucson gem shows in February (red!); and the myriad ways in which jewelers are coping with the market’s volatility (some are leaning into heavier 18k gold styles, while others are exploring alternative materials such as steel, wood, and titanium).
“Beaded jewelry—hot or not?” Jen asked me.
“HOT!” I replied.
“Gold jewelry—hot or not?” she persisted.
“HOT!”
“Silver jewelry—hot or not?”
“Medium!” I said, adding a caveat: “It depends on the designer. Two-tone, however, is really hot.”
It was a quick, fun session, and once it ended, I went poking around the show floor. My first stop was at the David Kord booth in the show’s inaugural Brands pavilion, home to designer-led and branded jewelry collections. A display of earrings and pendants featuring Ethiopian opals set within frames of turquoise and pink enamel caught my eye. The gems had a psychedelic sparkle that I won’t soon forget.
Next, I chatted with Sunny Jain, owner of Bavna, which was exhibiting with its sister brand, California Collections. Jain showed off Bavna’s new “floating tennis” styles, ranging from $2,000 to $50,000 retail—necklaces and earrings of drilled diamonds that appear to float without any visible metal settings.
“I started the collection before gold exploded, and now it works perfectly,” Jain said.
From there, I paused to admire jewelry at a number of booths offering chic, fashionable pieces at the right price—tassel pendants topped by pavé-studded panther heads at Abries Jewellery, chic titanium and 18k gold collar necklaces at the booth of an Italian exhibitor whose name escapes me, and stylishly simple diamond designs at Unicorn Jewels.
The team at New York City–based Unicorn was exhibiting for the first time. Their selection of bridal rings and everyday stackables—set with natural or lab-grown diamonds—included a 3 ct. heart-shape fancy vivid pink lab diamond ring that made me swoon.
I could say the same thing about the suite of on-trend ruby jewels at Golden Stone, an exhibitor based in downtown L.A. Between a necklace set with more than 36 cts. of rubies in 18k white gold ($64,000) and an 18k white and yellow gold bracelet with 33 cts. of rubies ($81,130), it was clear that for anyone craving a red fix, Golden Stone’s selection was the ticket.
On day two at JIS, I snapped up a sweet red and white handbag fashioned from plush, colorful fabric at Fuat Ozturk, an Istanbul-based exhibitor in the show’s new lifestyle pavilion, and reacquainted myself with the enormous men’s jewelry selection at Inox, where brand manager Sebastian (“Sebas”) Velasquez gave me the grand tour.
“We’re a jewelry brand for men who don’t like jewelry,” Sebas explained, as he pointed to a slew of new styles, including beaded bracelets from the Bushido collection, featuring Edo-period Japanese coins and mokume-gane metalwork, and unusual men’s necklaces like the matte blackened steel Cuban chains in the brand’s High Roller collection. “Stone and leather are quiet for men,” he said. “It’s all this stuff.”
The sheer variety of merchandise on display at JIS was astonishing. But one piece in particular stopped me in my tracks. I was walking past the America’s Gold booth when a massive diamond-set Miami Cuban chain in yellow gold beckoned to me from beneath the glass showcase.
The 10k gold necklace, which weighed just over a kilo, was smothered in 120 cts. of colorless lab-grown diamonds. When I noticed the price tag, my eyes practically popped out of my head. At $995,000, it may well have been the costliest piece on the show floor. But as the guy behind the counter explained, the price represented a 10X markup, in order to give wholesale buyers some flexibility when presenting the piece to clients (and give clients the impression that they’d scored a great deal).
The math didn’t make sense to me, but I couldn’t resist trying it on. As I draped the 23-inch-long, 28-mm-wide Cuban chain around my neck, I had to smile. Just another day in Miami.
Top: Earrings in 18k white gold with 2.01 cts. t.w. fancy yellow diamonds and 1 ct. t.w. white diamonds, $12,000; Unicorn Jewels