ALEXANDRE BENJAMIN NAVET

The French artist collaborates with Van Cleef & Arpels, transforming the interiors of the maison’s boutiques around the world

You trained in industrial design; how did you translate your skills to the jewellery world?

I can see links between the two. For me, jewellery and design are both fields of controlled, strict and precise expertise, yet ones that require out-of-thebox thinking to create exceptional pieces.

A high jewellery boutique is a nice place; you feel safe there. But it also feels quite solemn and imposing. I thought it would be the ideal place for an unexpected project like this.

We leave the scale of jewellery behind and move to that of interior design; we move from the scale of the hand to that of the body. I really want to set up an artistic dialogue with the space.

It’s your first time working with flowers—did you “blossom” with this project?

I have been drawing vases for several years, but people often point out that there are never any flowers in my vases, so I thought it was funny that the maison invited me to draw some. I wanted to create the illusion that they had appeared in the windows during the night as if by magic. That’s how the project feels for me: it’s as if the maison came to meet me at a table with empty vases, and fabulous flowers had bloomed in them the next day.