The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
Scaling new heights
The latest iteration of Bulgari’s Serpenti takes the design icon in an intriguingly abstract direction. By Avril Groom
Bulgari’s Serpenti is one of the most recognisable motifs of the watch and jewellery world. It’s up there with the Cartier Tank and the Rolex Daytona, but more varied in its history than either of them – yet always recognisable.
A shape-shifter that is never out of fashion, its latest incarnation was at the centre of a star-studded global launch during last month’s London Fashion Week. Hosting the event, CEO Jean-Christophe Babin called the slinkily sensuous new Seduttori version (prices from £4,000), “one of our most important designs ever”, because it brings what was a jewellery watch into the realm of the stylish everyday.
The Serpenti was launched in the 1940s as the Tubogas – a witty response to the new, flexible brass gas pipes of the time – and featured gold coils and jewelled serpent heads. Modern and industrial in look, the Tubogas entailed the highest of timeless jewellery craft so it could sinuously entwine necks and wrists.
“The snake is an ancient, classic symbol in jewellery going back to Cleopatra,” says Babin, cleverly referencing one of the models most famous devotees, Elizabeth Taylor, the owner of several Serpentis and who famously played the eponymous role in the 1963 film shot in Rome.
Taylor wasn’t alone in her devotion. Gina Lollobrigida favoured a bejewelled secret watch, while noted fashion editor Diana Vreeland often wore her Serpenti (white enamelled on gold) as a belt.
By the 1960s, Bulgari imaginations had run riot, creating textured or enamelled scaled versions, or with tiny, hand-set gold beads in the pallini technique, and fantastical gem-set heads. Alongside ran simpler Tubogas styles with the open, snake-head dials sometimes replaced by a square or round case, or framed by a geometric,
SERPENTI TUBOGAS
cobra-like hood. Three years ago it even morphed into the round, high-jewellery Incantati, based on the ouroboros – a symbol of eternity showing a coiled snake eating its own tail – its large dial a canvas for some incredible complications.
Not all have lasted. Bulgari’s success in reinvention, like the snake renewing its skin, is due to its willingness to experiment and break new ground, whatever the commercial pressure, according to new managing director of watches Antoine Pin.
“To achieve something new, it’s necessary to experience failure and we need the confidence to try, to learn and to develop,” he says. “If we don’t allow this, we don’t think differently and we don’t truly create.”
So it’s true that the new, rather abstract Serpenti Seduttori is taking a chance, but a carefully considered one. It abandons the Tubogas twist for a simple, smoothly flexible bracelet of elongated hexagonal ‘scales’, which require new techniques to make it so sinuous. The case, meanwhile, is as much teardrop as snake head.
It is, according to Babin, “a design whose beauty is equally appealing to those who don’t know Bulgari as to those who do recognise the symbols. It’s for a modern, busy woman who wants to wear a beautiful watch every day.”
It also plays the field, from no diamonds to full pavé. And while the ‘Born to be Gold’ campaign slogan emphasises the precious metal, there is also a steel version with a gold bezel. Something for everyone then – and not much risk of disappointment. bulgari.com
SERPENTI SEDUTTORI
Bulgari’s success in reinvention, like the snake renewing its skin, is due to its willingness to experiment