A NEW DIRECTION FOR TIFFANY & CO.
Luxury jeweller starting a ‘cultural conversation’ with Believe in Dreams campaign
NEW YORK On a stage suspended above the crowd gathered inside the Fifth Avenue flagship store of Tiffany & Co., rapper A$AP Ferg performs his hit song Plain Jane.
The Harlem-raised hip-hop star, who is a member of the rap troupe A$AP Mob, pauses his party performance to mention how, not long ago, he thought he’d never be able to walk in the venerated jeweller’s doors, let alone close out an evening of celebrations honouring the launch of the company ’s new Paper Flowers collection.
Now, he said, he is being gifted pieces by the brand.
The commentary on attainability — of luxury being approachable and achievable — seemed to be in keeping with the overarching theme of the new Tiffany & Co.
“Today, at Tiffany, we start a new cultural conversation,” said Alessandro Bogliolo, the company’s chief executive.
Earlier in the evening, Hollywood starlets and fashion models including Michelle Williams, Naomi Campbell and Kendall Jenner — as well as assorted international media, bloggers and a smattering of the American jewelry brand’s top executives and clientele — looked on as the new Believe in Dreams campaign film, starring Elle Fanning, was revealed.
The short film begins with Fanning, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, peering longingly into the Fifth Avenue store windows, the scene in black and white. As she stares at the gleaming Tiffany Diamond, a piece in the display window, a delicate dragonfly, begins to come alive. What follows is a Tiffany Blue-hued dance party, set to a remix of the song Moon River, which was performed by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
This time, though, the tune is sung by Fanning and rapped by A$AP Ferg.
During a May afternoon that served up near record-breaking temperatures, the American jewelry purveyor rolled out an ambitious marketing campaign in support of the launch, turning New York City’s yellow cabs Tiffany Blue, offering free coffees (in branded paper cups, of course) at coffee carts and paper flowers on display in trademark blue buckets at bodegas dotting Manhattan. Even select subway stations were awash with the robin’s egg hue.
The entire spectacle was captured and documented on social media platforms using the hash tag #TiffanyBlue — more than 400,000 times on Instagram alone. The emphasis on creating viral, share-worthy moments for the Paper Flowers jewelry launch was in keeping with what Bogliolo had said about the company ’s new direction.
“Paper Flowers is a very important launch ... it is very important for the growth and for the success of this company,” he says, adding that the collection was the “most important launch” for the company since 2009, when the Tiffany Keys collection was released. “Especially for our mission and our vision to become the new generation, the next generation jeweller.
“This collection combines everyday jewelry together with one-ofa-kind pieces,” he said. “This is important for us, because this is the first time, ever at Tiffany, that we have a collection that ranges from high jewelry one of a kind pieces all the way to fine jewelry. … All beautiful, even if at different price ranges.”
Under the direction of Reed Krakoff, who took the helm as the new chief artistic officer for Tiffany & Co. following the departure of design director Francesca Amfitheatrof in 2017, the jewelry purveyor is clearly embarking on a new direction.
Krakoff, who has had a long history in the fashion world, most notably with the leather goods brand Coach, revolutionized the way shoppers view luxury products, ushering in a wave of “accessible luxury” that allowed a wider variety of consumers to enjoy branded designer goods.
It seems he’s poised to write a similar story at Tiffany & Co.
“If something is extraordinary, it should be something that everyone, within the context of everyone that’s shopping, can buy or feels that it fits into their life. It’s not just about price,” Krakoff says.
“That delineation between high jewelry, fine jewelry and day jewelry is not really a delineation. It’s more about creating a concept and then filling it with things people want to wear.”
Krakoff says that when he first set out to create the collection, he knew immediately that it would be a more vertical offering.
“The idea was to really create high jewelry that wasn’t so much about the price — and there are some very expensive pieces — but be more about creating motifs with materials that aren’t usually done in a bold and different way,” he says.
With a disruptive take on tradition in mind, Krakoff and his team hit the 181-year-old company ’s expansive archives.
“There is an enormous number of floral motifs that Tiffany has worked with and rendered and referenced in the collection. We started thinking that maybe that was our starting point,” he said. “But, at the same time, it’s a very traditional motif. So we started to think of a way of reinterpreting it in a much more modern and simple graphic way.”
What began as “playing” with cut-outs, quickly transitioned into a preoccupation with the very material that was being used to shape the model designs: paper.
“These petals, this motif of an iris that is simplified, it was more just a suggestion of a flower. We started thinking ‘can we combine them in a way that feels made by hand and artisanal?’ So this became the idea of a pin holding together the petals, which brought together our idea of artisanship and nature together in one place,” he says.
The idea of the iris, which features prominently throughout the Paper Flowers collection, came to the team from a watercolour drawing found in the archives that dated back to the 1800s. The flower’s scent is also the main note of the Tiffany & Co. fragrance.
“There was something contemporary and something historical that kind of seemed like it would blend in with Tiffany,” Krakoff says. “The motif, the type of flower, the way it was rendered, was all solidified.”
With the inspiration and the motifs figured, the team then moved on to colour.
“We started thinking about the idea of using colour in a diamond collection,” Krakoff says. “The iris was the easy way of understanding colour and referencing something in nature. The purple-y blue is a tanzanite, which is a historical stone for Tiffany. The yellow for the firefly references the Tiffany Diamond, which is the most famous piece of archival jewelry.”
Krakoff’s design team then moved on to the creation of the pieces. And this is where they looked to shake things up even further.
“We started talking about how people don’t want to put things away in a box and take it out occasionally. People want to interpret things their own way. Some will wear a very expensive handbag with jeans, they’ll wear a couture dress with flats. We wanted to interpret that kind of free personal interpretation of high jewelry with this collection,” he says. “You will see pieces that are quite extraordinary and very fantastical, and you’ll see pieces within the same collection that can be worn with a T-shirt.”
He says the designs, which range from delicate pendant necklaces to extravagant baguette cuffs and even a choker necklace and are priced from $3,400 to more than $1 million, are designed with the expectation that they will be worn in unique and unexpected ways.
“It’s very much that way of treating luxury in a personal way,” Krakoff says.
It’s an approach to exquisite pieces that Krakoff is confident will resonate with jewelry buyers, both young and old.