[5] The following year he organized an international exhibition of jewelry in Athens, joined by Van Cleef, Bulgari, Rene Kern and Harry Winston.

Empress Farah of Iran commissioned Lalaounis to create a collection of jewelry and objects inspired by Persian art, which went on display at the Imperial Palace in Tehran.

He opened his first international store in Paris at 364 rue Saint-Honoré, near Place Vendôme and produced a short film explaining the sources of inspiration for the jewels on display.

A year later, the Smithsonian Institution invited him to give a lecture on his art and to exhibit his collection The Achilles Shield at the National Museum of American History.

[3] Lalaounis exhibited his Helen of Troy collection at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia as well as in Houston, Texas, where he was made an honorary citizen by the mayor.

The jewel, for Ilias Lalaounis, is not a simple decorative object, rather it carries a message, is an expression of inner life, a link with the distant past, a symbol and a memory.

In November 1987, Lalaounis was invited by Teddy Kollek, Mayor of Jerusalem, to present his collection Treasures of the Holy Land, in an exhibition specially organized by the Israel Museum and subsequently shown in New York, London and Paris.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey invited him to exhibit Arabesques, as well as another complementary collection, Soleiman the Magnificent, at the Islamic Art Museum of Istanbul.