There is a particular kind of silence that most people never have to think about. For Philippe Vergez, it’s the room he’s lived in his entire adult life.
The French designer is profoundly deaf in one ear, with significant hearing loss in the other. He does not experience music the way most people do, as sound arriving in real time. Instead, he feels it: through vibration, through rhythm, through the way a room’s air seems to move when a bassline hits. It’s an unusual way to build a career in an industry built on sound and spectacle, and yet Vergez has spent three decades doing exactly that, first in eyewear, now in fine jewelry, always translating what he can’t hear into something people can wear.
“I don’t design from what I hear,” Vergez says. “I design from what I feel.”
That philosophy sits at the center of VERGEZ™, the Hong Kong-based fine jewelry Maison he founded in 2023 after a long career that included executive design roles at major eyewear groups and his own earlier brand, Jee Vice, whose sunglasses were worn by Sarah Jessica Parker, Anne Hathaway, and Rihanna, among others.
VERGEZ™’s most recent recognition came this year, when the brand’s Roaring Lion Choker, a multi-strand piece in white gold, diamonds, and Tahitian pearls created for actress and musician Qymira, won the Silver A’ Design Award in the Fine Jewelry category. But awards, Vergez says, aren’t really the point.
“Every piece begins as a story,” he explains. “That’s why our signature is Wear the Story. The jewelry carries the story so its wearer can carry it forward.”
It’s a philosophy that extends beyond the pieces themselves. A percentage of every VERGEZ™ sale supports children through two partner organizations: the One Gaia Foundation, which connects underserved youth with mentorship through music, dance, and the arts, and The House of Affection, an orphanage in Hué, Vietnam, that Vergez has visited personally. When historic flooding hit central Vietnam in late 2025, damaging the orphanage’s buildings and displacing the children living there, VERGEZ™ used its platform to help raise support for the rebuilding effort.
“Business doesn’t have to be separate from meaning,” Vergez says. “I don’t think grand gestures matter as much as consistent ones.”
For Vergez personally, the hearing impairment that shapes his design process has also shaped how he moves through the world in less visible ways. Reading lips in two languages, French and English, takes constant concentration; a simple dinner conversation with more than one person can become exhausting by the end of the day. He’s spoken openly about the isolation that can come with an invisible disability, and about deciding, after years of quiet shame, that the same difference that made social situations harder was also what sharpened his eye as a designer.
“For years I was ashamed of it,” he says. “Then I understood something: the same thing that isolates you in a crowded room is what can sharpen everything else.”
Each VERGEZ™ piece is made entirely to order in the Maison’s atelier, no mass production, no standing inventory, positioning the work closer to a collectible than a conventional luxury product. The brand ships globally, with import duties and taxes included at checkout.
Vergez, now based between Hong Kong and his native Biarritz, France, says he isn’t interested in chasing seasonal trends.
“Trends are the fever of the world,” he says. “We seek the slow burn. Timelessness is born not from perfection, but from imagination.”
About VERGEZ™
VERGEZ™ is a bespoke fine jewelry Maison founded in 2023 by French designer Philippe Vergez, operating from Hong Kong under Rock’n Design Ltd. The brand’s Gold and Silver collections range from €600 to €20,000 and are handcrafted to order.
Learn more: vergez.art