Out of Retirement collection provides gold pipe dreams
As regular readers know, this space is usually devoted to scintillating discussions of things I want and have actually purchased. As we all know, however, the state of wanting is a vastly larger concept. So this week I’m stretching my wings to include something that I wouldn’t even consider buying for myself, but will still always pine for — pipe dreams of possession being the real sustenance of the truly committed.
This particular pipe dream has its waking life roots in a luncheon hosted by Tiffany & Co., where I was seated beside a woman wearing a stupendous bracelet. A smooth graphic loop of gold around this woman’s wrist like a big, bold semicolon, it was the first thing I noticed when I joined the table.
The woman in the fabulous bracelet was called Liz St. Louis. Not only did St. Louis turn out to be a lovely lunch companion, but she’s the director of Tiffany’s Bloor St. flagship, so she gave me the full drill. As I had suspected given its bold, swoopy style, the bracelet wasn’t a brand new design, but it also wasn’t vintage. In fact, the piece was originally designed back in the ’70s, but it had just been brought out of the company’s robust archives for a new initiative called Tiffany’s Out of Retirement collection.
My interest piqued, I did a little research on this Out of Retirement business, only to learn that it is the result of a collaboration — the first in Tiffany & Co.’s 178-year history — where the venerable jeweller’s archives were guest curated by none other than the cool hunters at the extremely hip Dover Street Market. A May-December romance, it is true, but definitely one forged in fashion-cred heaven.
Indeed, the eight extremely fetching pieces in the capsule collection, all of which are revivals of archived Tiffany designs, graced the vitrines for its 2015 release at Dover Street Market’s insanely fashionable boutiques in London, New York and Tokyo. A few of them (including this killer 18-karat gold Rectangle ring, $5,400, that I can just imagine gesturing with stunningly at some future function) are still on offer at select Tiffanys around the globe. At least until these beauties, too, fade back into the jewelled glow of the company’s history.
It is an old saw of the brand that Tiffany designs are “never discontinued, simply retired.” Well, this is one retiree that’s definitely still got it going on. So much so that I find myself wondering why it was ever retired in the first place, and then replaced with those rather ordinary, if widely popular, Tiffany hearts and tag pendants.