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PSA: Bulgari’s creative director has just given us new cause to put a ring on it
How a Bulgari “mistake” became a must-have.
Everybody has one. That woman at the office you sense is coming before she even enters the room. Chicly flamboyant. Inspiringly upbeat. At Bulgari, it’s Lucia Silvestri. The diminutive creative director loves a big style statement in the effortlessly elegant way of Italian women and has been known to wear high-jewellery “billionaire pieces” from her office safe to team meetings. “They look at me like I’m crazy. I even wear the tiara,” she beams. “I feel natural with the jewels. It feels part of me.”
Perched on her desk in her Rome office, surrounded by photos from her glamorous 35-year career, it’s obvious Silvestri is doing what she was born to do. On her left hand is a gobsmacking new nine-carat mandarin garnet set in onyx and diamonds. It took two years to create – and she’s in love. “I can’t stop looking at it… it’s like my kid!”
While some of us turn to a Kitkat to get through particularly challenging parts of the day, Silvestri just has to slip on a lariat or a statement cuff. “To wear gems every day makes me happy and gives me energy. If I’m nervous I just have to touch them to feel better.”
Her first job at Bulgari was travelling the world buying colourful gems. “I like to experiment, I like to mix materials, I like to put different colours of gold together. Right now, I’m wearing pink and yellow gold, one diamond [in her left ear], one emerald [in her right]. I like to play with elements.”
Meanwhile, she’s picked up another ring from the tray in front of her and is subconsciously playing with it. It’s Bulgari’s iconic B.zero1, engineered with an articulated central spiral. It’s a piece she calls the “perfect mistake”, a tri-coloured gold prototype of the original ring that’s stayed under lock and key for more than 15 years. “When we made the first one in 1999, we started with one in yellow, one in white gold… Mr Bulgari saw this one in three colours and said, ‘It’s nice, but it’s not the right time.’ So we put it in the safe.”
At the time, a ring made from three kinds of gold raised eyebrows. Even made out of a single gold, not everyone was convinced a ring inspired by Rome’s Colosseum was going to be a hit – but as Silvestri tells it, company president Paolo Bulgari knew better. “He had a vision and he was right. We started with a ring and sold a thousand, so we made a pendant and bracelet.”
While the original design has been reimagined in ceramic, diamonds and marble, only now is the tri-colour take – a pink-gold spiral band framed top and bottom in yellow and white gold (bottom left) – being revealed. “During a meeting we thought, ‘How could we celebrate this collection that’s very important for Bulgari?’ I remembered the safe, this ring.”
The way Silvestri’s slipping the band on and off, it looks like the new B.zero1 is next on her shopping list. “This collection is typically Bulgari because it’s bold, contemporary and timeless. It’s something for a very self-confident woman – something you can buy for yourself.”
“To wear gems every day makes me happy. If I’m nervous I just have to touch them to feel better”