It’s a warm Saturday night in June. The Nigerian musician Burna Boy is standing on stage at the London Stadium, looking out at a sea of people. Bathed in a deep-red light, shirtless, wearing leather trousers, and dripping in diamonds, he begins to sing his mellow 2022 hit “It’s Plenty.”
Pausing for a moment to take it all in—another sold-out show in a run of sold-out shows—he turns the mic out towards the darkness, and 80,000 voices respond: “Don’t know how to show you my love without fuckin’ up / But I can buy you a new AP straight from A Jewellers.”*
Hatton Garden has been the centre of London’s jewelry trade since Medieval times, a tiny stretch of gently sloping street that still serves as the city’s market for precious stones, rare watches, and lots of wheeling and dealing. One quiet afternoon recently, I pass a few pigeons and rows of shops with names like Bling, Touch of Gold, Kings ’n’ Queens, and Prestige Pawnbrokers. Outside a polished but nondescript storefront, I press a buzzer and wait. A security guard built like a commercial fridge appears from behind a bulletproof glass door. “I’m here to see Abs,” I say.
There are plenty of independent diamond dealers that cater to a customer base with expensive taste and an eye for rare and shiny objects, but few, if any, in the UK have the sort of clientele that A Jewellers has earned over the years: Central Cee, Burna Boy, Aitch, Fredo, Floyd Mayweather, J Hus, Wizkid, Headie One, AJ Tracey, Eden Hazard, Digga D... You get the picture. An appointment with Abtin “Abs” Abbasi has become a rite of passage if you’re a high-profile musician or athlete with deep pockets and a desire to stand out.
The shop’s spotlights reflect cabinets overflowing with diamonds—heavy chains and fully set Swiss grails, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and Rolex, alongside a few cases containing unmodified classics, Pepsi-bezel GMT Master 2s, and enough colouful Richard Milles to make Rafael Nadal break a sweat. A young man whispers to a member of staff about collecting something for Skepta. I’m handed a bottle of water and ushered into the VIP suite—cushioned walls, mounted TV screens, and Louis Vuitton luggage from Virgil Abloh’s tenure—where Abbasi waits for me.
Growing up above a pizza shop in Northwest London, Abbasi wasn’t exposed to the rarefied and often obfuscating world of watches until a friend of a friend offered him a Breitling. “I was selling sportswear at the time,” he says, reclining in a leather chair. He’s wearing a bleached denim jacket, hair freshly faded, a lightbulb flash of diamonds on his wrist occasionally catching the light as he gesticulates. “Around 2008, I started buying and selling watches on a very small scale. I didn’t know too much about them, so I did my research. Naturally, when you’re buying and selling, you learn bits and pieces from each deal.”
His chance paid off and the Breitling turned a profit, which led to another watch, then another. “I kept searching, looking for deals—the internet, different group chats—and over the years I started building a brand,” says Abbasi. “I started to think that I could make it into something big. Celebrities started to notice us through social media. We gave good service, we did things fairly, we gave good prices, and I was always out and about, networking and meeting people. I introduced jewellery into the business, and then diamond custom watches about 10 years ago. I saw there was a market for it. I diamond-set a few watches, we sold them, then I searched for dealers and factories for high-quality sets. Now we’re known for offering the best of the best.”
After building a following from his phone and a tiny office, Abbasi needed a proper base, somewhere with an expensively clad VIP room and polished marble counters. He’d caught wind that a dry cleaner on Hatton Garden might be looking to sell their space, so he put in an offer. “That’s how I ended up here,” he says, palms open to the ceiling, his own immaculate kingdom. “We had a portfolio of celebrity clients. The only thing we were missing at the time was having a shop, somewhere in Hatton Garden. It drove me to make it great.”
“I first heard of [A Jewellers] by word of mouth,” says the London rapper AJ Tracey, who has a thing for Rolex GMT IIs. “I had also seen some custom work they had done for someone else. The confidence they had in their work was enough for me to start commissioning pieces with them.
“It’s probably their attention to detail,” adds Tracey when I ask about what sets Abbasi et al apart from other high-end jewelers. “They won’t just cobble something together; they spend all their time researching new techniques, types of settings, and ways to push the art. The way they handle business is not just professional, but extremely attentive.
“I’ve amassed quite a few [watches] now,” continues Tracey, “ranging from entry-level sports models to UAE-only exclusive platinum gem sets. I try not to get too carried away with buying them—it’s a bit tricky though!”
By Abbasi’s own estimate, A Jewellers has been shouted out in 50 different songs—one of the ultimate co-signs in this line of work. Indeed, a designated A Jewellers Spotify playlist is going to include “Hear No Evil” by Headie One, “Interlude” by K-Trap, “Glockie” by AJ Tracey, on top of some prime Burna Boy beats. “We revolutionized it in the UK,” says Abbasi, who also has something of a photographic memory when it comes to specifics. The custom chain for Krept from Krept & Konan, “That was our first celebrity piece.” Burna Boy’s Richard Mille RM 011 Felipe Massa GMT in titanium. “He wanted the color of the strap to be white to match his new Rolls-Royce,” he says, smiling at the memory. “We did that, and we changed the crown guard to white too, then we took it to Lagos to hand-deliver it to him.
“Before, most of our high-profile clients were footballers who were looking for gold Rolexes and APs—that was where the market was at, players like [Pierre-Emerick] Aubameyang, and Paul Pogba. Now the rappers want custom pendants and jewellery, things that honour their successes and certain milestones. In terms of watches, the taste now is in high complications, Richard Mille tourbillons and skeletonised dials. They start understanding what goes into making a watch, so guys are looking beyond your typical piece. They want calendars and moon phases. More sophisticated movements. I just like seeing our jewellery being worn out in the world.”
Abbasi tells me that while the Patek Nautilus and Aquanaut are still his best sellers, models such as AP’s skeleton 15407 have recently sky-rocketed. The demand for Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshores, Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendars, Richard Mille RM 65-01s (an automatic split-seconds chronograph), and the RM 50-04 tourbillon—all pieces with elaborate, visible internal engineering, and price tags to match—has shot up, many with a sprinkling of extra bling.
“Done well, it can certainly add a premium,” says Jonathan Darracott, Bonhams’ global head of watches. “Altered or customized watches can add an aspect to a watch that would not be achieved in production. Although diamond-embellished watches are not as popular on the secondary market, long-term trends are changeable.”
Darracott mentions the lavishly encrusted rose-gold Rolex Daytona Rainbow Cosmograph—which can fetch more than £400,000 on the aftermarket—as an example of luxury Swiss watchmakers keeping an eye on the customization trend. “I’d say it caught the attention of Rolex, but they have been making embellished watches for a long time, and only recently are they becoming more sought after. But many diamond-encrusted and customized models can be produced poorly, which in turn destabilizes the case integrity and always negates any manufacturer warranties.”
Plans are afoot for an A Jewellers venture in the Middle East, after a successful concession in Lagos, where Abbasi has become the chromed-out consigliere to the country’s biggest Afrobeats artists—Burna Boy recently added to his collection with a £1.6 million diamond ring. Out in the glistening black marble foyer, underneath the sort of too-bright lights required to inspect a piece of jewelry that costs more than a house in Hampstead, I ask Abbasi his secrets: How does he keep people coming back?
“When you get to meet people, it’s building an organic relationship,” he says with a customer-service smile. “We advise people correctly about what we think. We steer away from brands and pieces that might die out... without naming names. I prefer pieces that might have less margin, but will be less of a headache down the line.
“If you ever need anything,” he says, shaking my hand by the door, “even after a few beers at 3pm, just send me a text.” He flashes a knowing smile and as he turns back towards the VIP suite, I resist the urge to say anything other than, “Thanks. Will do.” In my head, though, one of those iced-out AP Royal Oaks would go down a treat.
This story originally appeared on British GQ with the title “Inside the diamond-encrusted and very starry world of A Jewellers”