Spending too much time looking at screens of all shapes and sizes?

You’re not the only one and that’s what jewelry industry veteran Katia de Lasteyrie wants to address with Spktrl, a color-changing ring set with a lab-grown diamond that is jewelry before it is a tech device.

Unlike other smart jewelry, which is geared toward “the quantifiable self and tracks you,” it will be a “sort of meta-technology, an additional layer that empowers you to have better control of your time, of where your attention goes,” she said.  

Instead of using screens to display notifications, the center stone will light up in different hues, to be set up by the user using a streamlined companion app with AI-capabilities to better learn what is important.

The idea emerged from de Lasteyrie’s desire to find a “meaningful, aesthetically intelligent way” to address the omnipresence of screens and the distractions they create without losing out on the convenience of our smart devices.

It owes its name to the word “spectral,” which de Lasteyrie chose in reference to the color spectrum.

“[The ring] emphasizes color as a symbolic language — we are hardwired to interpret color faster than any other signifier,” she continued. “From nature to high-stakes environments [like] air and sea, to science fiction — think ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ — color serves as a shortcut to convey meaning.”

And while it isn’t the first ring to embark a tech side — the now-defunct Ringly came up in conversation — the founder said this was not just about “quiet technology.”

“I wanted to create this piece that will totally harness high jewelry and jewelry culture,” she said. “It’s a design-first product so the technology is fully embedded and hidden…from the outside, you can only see a nice piece of jewelry.”

That dovetailed into the idea of a signet ring design, since Spktrl’s colors will have “the same kind of concealed meaning as a signet ring has and has had for centuries,” she added.

A graduate of the Paris-Dauphine and Sorbonne universities who is also a trained gemologist and jewelry designer, she cut her teeth in the jewelry departments of the Arts Décoratifs and Christie’s before a short stint in Chanel’s high jewelry division.

After that, she spent some 14 years at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, first at Louis Vuitton as head of global marketing and product development for its high jewelry and high-end products for a decade, then as head of innovation projects at the watch and jewelry division.

In this latest position, she led the project that resulted in Tag Heuer’s “Diamant d’Avant-Garde” gems, stones grown in unusual shapes — trapezoids, quadrilaterals and even an arrowhead — to fit the spots they would occupy on the Carrera Plasma.

As for the Spktrl ring, the diamond will be set in a gold basket, itself placed on a titanium shank, a combination that plays off the object’s expected role as a bridge between the technological and jewelry spheres.

Steel and materials drawn from the sphere of watchmaking, rather than jewelry, are likely on the cards for future designs, which may expand beyond rings, she added.

While de Lasteyrie demurred on naming the price of the rings, she said it would sit in the premium-to-fine jewelry range, likely with a four-figure price tag.

Preorders will open in the third quarter of 2025 on Spktrl’s website, with jewels expected to be delivered in mid-2026.