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Tree of Life" cuff bracelet from Karen Bizer in shagreen and 18-karat yellow gold with 5.4 carats of multicolor diamonds; suggested retail price is $26,000. KarenBizerFineJewelry.com

New York--At the JA New York Summer Show in July, German Seferbekov, the Russian jewelry designer behind Kabirksi and Co., displayed a collection of deluxe yet provocative creations made all the more intriguing by his trademark image, a cockroach.

The insect appears in the designer's ads and on his Web site, where an animated roach crawls across a screen bearing Seferbekov's scribbled pseudonym, G. Kabirski, and pauses to mark the period and dot the two "i's" with diamonds before scurrying away.

The collection and the edgy, if uncomfortable, imagery Kabirski uses to promote it aptly embodies the gothic-punk undertones of this fall's jewelry collections. Whereas some seasons are marked by designers' love for nature and romance, fall 2009's overriding ethos is a hard, 80s-inspired edginess with just the tiniest concessions to the conventional definition of elegance.

Designers of diamond jewelry, in particular, have gotten the memo. Take one of Kabirski's more unusual necklaces: From afar, it looks like a collar carved from mammoth ivory or white agate. In reality, it's made from the spine of a cobra--lightweight, sandpaper-like and remarkably skeletal. A sprinkling of tiny bezel-set diamonds in shades of champagne adds a surprisingly luxe touch.

The designer's dark attitude is echoed in the oxidized silver and diamond jewels that have captivated fine-jewelry buyers lately.

Helena Krodel, director of media and special events at the Jewelry Information Center, calls the pairing of stones with blackened metal the  "biggest and only" trend of the season.

"Everything is black-black metal, black diamonds--even flowers I'm seeing set with black gemstones," Krodel says. "No one wants to be perceived as a conspicuous consumer. They want new things, but they want them to look aged."

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