If you want to truly learn about someone, the jewellery they wear can speak volumes. Take jewellery designer Chau Lui’s hands, adorned with rings that each tell a story. Her engagement ring, which she designed with her husband after being together for 14 years, is a four-carat oval diamond with three smaller diamonds in each prong, representing the couple’s “past, present and future.” On another finger, she wears a lab-created diamond Toi et Moi ring to represent her daughters, while two other gold bands—one domed, one in a quilted pattern—are a tribute to her mother. “I wear these rings as a way to honour her and the significant role she had in raising me to become who I am,” Lui tells 3.

Her sister, Trang Wong, wears an equally eloquent, if more pared-back, ring stack: a signet ring engraved with the initials of her three kids. “That way, they are always with me,” she says. 

There’s one more story these jewels have to tell, and it’s one of sisterhood, entrepreneurship and family tradition. That’s because Lui and Wong are co-founders of CELI, a new fine jewellery brand that launched in November 2024. Like their ring stacks, the name CELI is no throwaway choice for these sisters. “The name was inspired by the word celebration. My initials, C and L, are in the name. My daughters’ names are Layla and Isla; their initials are featured in the name, and Trang’s middle daughter’s name is Eli,” Lui says. “ It was important for us to have our children’s names in there as CELI is the next chapter of our story, and it is about the legacy we want to leave for the future.” 

With CELI, the sisters are continuing a story started by their parents, who immigrated from Vietnam to Canada in 1985. Armed with a Vietnamese-to-English dictionary and an apprenticeship in goldsmithing, they opened a 400-square-foot store in St. Albert, a small town in Alberta, in 1987. Just shy of 40 years later, Paris Jewellers now has 23 locations across four provinces. 

Wong and Lui grew up in this business, and still helm it in the roles of Financial Officer and Director of Operations, respectively. Through their roles there, and with the help of research and existing customers under Paris Jewellers, the sisters found that customers were looking for a more modern and unique personalized approach to fine jewellery. CELI, which opened a flagship store on Toronto’s iconic Queen Street West shortly after they went live online, is their answer to this demand—and their chance to take so many of the lessons in entrepreneurship they’ve learned and put them into practice in a new way. “We are always fascinated by other businesses and taking inspiration and learning from other industries, but in our heart of hearts:  [We] love jewellery and what it represents every time we put it on,” Wong says. 

Something else they love? Seeing themselves described as “co-founders” for the first time in print. “We have been ‘co-owners’ together for almost 20 years, so seeing ‘founder’ in our titles was something very new and significant, having started CELI together,” Wong adds. And while the common advice is often to avoid working with family, the sisters couldn’t imagine doing something like this with anyone else. “My sister really is my hero. I cannot imagine a better business partner and best friend. Throughout everything we have done together, she has always remained steady, logical, with a very keen talent for creating the steps we need to take to achieve the big dream,” Lui says. “I really saw this as we started to build out the dream of launching CELI.” 

Trang, for her part, describes her sister as the “big dreamer” in their family. “I have learned the importance of this during the entire process of CELI,” she says, “that we do have to have those big aspirations and challenge ourselves to dream bigger than sometimes we could have ever imagined.” 

And how’s this for a lovely bit of kismet? The very first sale that they made at their Queen Street store was to twin sisters, also entrepreneurs, who had flown in for the Taylor Swift concert, looking for something special to mark the trip. “We celebrated the moment by opening our first bottle of Champagne, which is part of the custom experience when you shop in-store with us in Toronto,” says Lui. “They selected complementary solid gold stacking rings and a gemstone Toi et Moi ring with a genuine black onyx that honoured their grandfather’s story.” 

She adds: “It was so special. I will never forget it.”