Never bought from the chateau d'argent range but, in comparison, abandoning that for fashion jewellery was, in my opinion, a bad move. Would any professionally qualified jewellery designer and gemmologist, prefer to work with precious metals, as opposed to base metals? I can understand someone deciding they want to design a range which is affordable to all pockets, but silver pieces can be manufactured quite economically. Also, it doesn't ring true, to start by designing sterling silver and THEN choose to concentrate on fake metals and paste, to enable more people to be able to purchase it. It is all a profit thing. He obviously feels that fashion jewellery will be a bigger seller for him. My guess is that, if it were more financially productive, he would rather work in precious metals. Who knows, maybe the Q told him that, as the sterling range wasn't selling as well as it needed to, if he wanted to continue selling on QVC, he needed to bring a fashion line out.