MENĒ is different. In the vast landscape of jewelry designers and retailers MENĒ sticks out like a spec of gold on the bottom of a dirt pan. What sets MENĒ apart is its simplicity and adherence to just a handful of principles that most Western jewelers have long abandoned if they ever had them at all.

First and foremost MENĒ uses only 24K gold, pure platinum and nothing else. These metals in this purity are automatically considered investment grade, the same stuff that goes into the gold and platinum bullion that many savvy investors hold in some amount in their portfolios. MENĒ effectively blurs the line between investment and fashion. By comparison most Western jewelry is made out of 18K or lower grade gold, gemstones, and occasionally out of silver alloy. Save for an occasional man’s wedding band, you’ll be hard pressed to find a platinum creation in most jewelry stores.

This strict adherence to just two ingredients automatically streamlines and unifies MENĒ collections, which in turn makes it very easy to mix and match MENĒ pieces into a beautifully cohesive set. Maybe because pure gold is soft and doesn’t lend itself to intricate design or maybe just because, MENĒ jewelry is not ornate. This brings us to another important distinction.

While there’s an abundance of 24K jewelry in the world, most of it is made for the Asian market and the designs reflect that. A quick Internet search of 24K jewelry results in images of phoenix and dragon, plump, smiling pigs, flowers, Ganesh, Lakshmi and other symbols that have meaning in Chinese and Eastern Indian cultures. Not that there’s anything wrong with Asian symbols, but it doesn’t leave much choice for a Westerner who yearns for bullion-grade jewelry devoid of Asian flare and that’s precisely where MENĒ comes in. MENĒ creations reflect simple, everyday items like a key or a lock, a die, a bullet or a nail, a dog tag, etc. Everything MENĒ makes has very clean lines; it simply looks sharp and very modern.

Finally, there’s pricing. Typical jewelry markup includes the costs of producing alloys, subjective costs of gemstones, extensive production costs and so on. In contrast, MENĒ designs are uncomplicated, made of only pure precious metal, so there is nowhere to hide the markup and MENĒ doesn’t even try. All MENĒ prices clearly state the weight of the piece, the value of the metal and the MENĒ fee, which is typically 20% of the precious metal value.

Everything about MENĒ, from it’s bullion-based philosophy to its designs to its pricing and even to its website, is simple and simply elegant.