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56 PARADISE FOUND

Alessandro Michele’s Midas touch in growing the Gucci universe has spurred a foray into high jewellery by the Italian fashion house. grace tay heads to Paris to discover the inaugural collection and new Place Vendôme boutique

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Gucci’s biotic foray into high jewellery

Gardens feature large in the vast landscape that’s Alessandro Michele’s imaginatio­n. This is seen in his new take on the Flora print each season; we got other whiffs of creative expression in his Gucci Bloom fragrance two years ago and the recent range of premium perfumes, The Alchemist’s Garden. He also cultivated Gucci Garden, a concept store opened last year that offers experienti­al retail, a museum and dining at Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura.

Now, Gucci’s creative director has turned to fabled places – Eden, Arcadia and Xanadu – for the genesis of the house’s first highjewell­ery collection, Hortus Deliciarum (Garden of Delights in Latin). The collection takes its name from a 12th-century illustrate­d encyclopae­dia of philosophy, theology, poems, music and science compiled by a nun, whose content spanned the biblical creation story in the Garden of Eden to the end of the world and Judgement Day.

Gucci’s version, however, is a gem lover’s Shangri-La of rainbows, exotic creatures and mythical beings. Precious and semiprecio­us stones of all hues evoke a garden in full florescenc­e.

The collection of more than 200 pieces was unveiled in Paris in early July at Hôtel de la Salle, a 17th-century hôtel particulie­r with ornate Louis XIV-style interiors. With their crystal chandelier­s, gold-leaf boiserie, and painted ceilings and wall panels, the four salons needed just an artful assortment of carpets in different patterns and hues to be “Guccified”.

Veritable cabinets of curiositie­s, each salon had its own platoon of glassless display cases that framed the new Gucci jewels set on plush velvet display stands – a romantic menagerie of exotic, sparkling creations, alive with fire and light, waiting to be discovered up close from all angles.

Indeed, the animal kingdom is captured in this collection. One of three themes the designs were grouped under, this chapter includes wild creatures and mythologic­al beasts. The lion, tiger, snake and bee,

already familiar house pets adopted by Michele, make appearance­s in myriad forms here. While they exist in literal forms in some pieces – a ring on which a lion clutches a gem in its jaws; a bee brooch with a coloured stone for its head; a bracelet with two tiger heads facing off – motifs of their habitats are also used, such as in the Bee Multifinge­r Ring, where diamond-studded gold foliage curls upward around a large aquamarine.

At times, the animals go into camouflage. Especially witty are pieces that almost look like convention­al coloured-stone high jewellery: chandelier earrings with a fan of vivaciousl­y hued teardrop stones; a floral diamond bracelet with a chromatic staccato. Closer inspection, however, reveals gem-bearing lion heads among the designs. My personal favourites are the ornate Lion Head crosses dotted with a sassy riot of colours. The bee, similarly hidden in plain sight, alights on diamond chandelier earrings and a bangle, its blinged wings crafted en tremblant for a playful quiver.

While the lions are in various expression­s of ferocity, the tigers are decidedly cuter. Besides smiling two-headed bangles (a bejewelled riff on the clasp of the Dionysus bag perhaps) are wrap rings and “mer-tigers” with flippered tails (inspired by Triton and the half-tiger, half-carp Japanese sea monster of lore, Shachihoko). Pieces in the Dionysus line, supposedly inspired by the tigers that drew the chariot rode by the Greek god, star a creature with dragon-like features and sinuous links of alternatin­g polished gold and diamonds that mimic a tiger’s stripes but call to mind a spine.

These animalisti­c high-jewellery editions, as Gucci fans would have noticed, are new iterations of designs already in the house’s fine-jewellery and costume-jewellery stables.

The lion head, for instance, was but one of the antique-style accessorie­s sent down the runway in 2015 – back then embellishe­d with Swarovski crystals – to mesh and clash with Michele’s nu-vintage outfits. When Gucci introduced its “medium high” finejewell­ery line in 2017, the big cat was upgraded to gold and real diamonds, with prices then already touching €70,000. Keeping pace, two years on, comes this year’s high-jewellery offering.

Gucci’s latest move comes as no surprise, as parent organisati­on Kering’s chairman and CEO FrançoisHe­nri Pinault had announced its high-jewellery ambitions in November 2018. It was also previously reported that Gucci had hired its own gemmologis­t to hunt down gems for its fine jewellery, which is made in Italy. For Hortus Deliciarum, unique stones were personally sourced by Michele himself.

These are best spotlighte­d in the collection’s solitaire line, where each ring sports a large, deliciousl­y coloured keystone. In true Michele style, there’s a vintage feel, but there’s nothing predictabl­e about the rings’ designs. A 24.48-carat emerald-cut mint tourmaline sits like a limpid pool atop a nugget-style ring with coils of different etchings; in a similar style, but fully paved in diamonds, are rings with a heart-shape rubellite (20.22 carats) or aquamarine (24.6 carats). A smaller pear-cut diamond is set just off each keystone – the jewellery equivalent of Cindy Crawford and Marilyn Monroe’s beauty marks, one wonders – and stars carved on the inside of the ring can be seen through the gemstones at certain angles, just for that cheeky Gucci touch. Other solitaires include cushion-cut gems held in baroque-style florets of gold and diamonds; mandarin garnet, tourmaline and topaz pears topping mini diamond-and-white-gold bouquets of tulips, with stalks of gold beading; and relatively modest-sized Paraiba (1.28 carats) or demantoid (1.39 carats) in a nest feathered in diamonds. While some designs are reproducib­le with different stones, others are completely unique – a ring with a coiled snake carved from Ethiopian opal being one of them – and never to be replicated again.

The third theme in the collection is eternal love. Hearts and arrows are the recurring motif here, paired

The animalisti­c high-jewellery editions are new iterations of designs already in the house’s ne-jewellery and costume-jewellery stables

With their claw-footed cabriole legs and wings, these display cases call to mind the winged Lion of Venice, which stands guard over Piazza San Marco, once the centrepiec­e of a fountain in Paris’s Place des Invalides after Napoleon despoiled Venice at the turn of the 18th century

with florals. The three diadems in this set plausibly allude to fairy tales in which the princess always finds her true love; one especially twee headband with a ribbon of blue sapphires conjures up Disney magic.

Hortus Deliciarum now has an official home at 16 Place Vendôme in the Paris square where boutiques of the world’s leading high-jewellery brands reside. With none of the OTT hypersatur­ation we’ve come to expect of the fashion boutiques, Gucci’s first high-jewellery boutique in the world, which officially opened on July 2, is a muted but sexy affair, with blackframe­d showcases lined with teal satin. Fine jewellery, watches and custom-made trunks are also sold here.

Although it’s a relatively small boutique, it represents a giant leap for the brand. In the face of fast fashion and transient trends, Michele has eschewed the idea that past season fashion means passé, espousing instead that each new collection is a continuati­on of his last, and warrants the same eclectic mix-match of pieces within and between seasons. And in Gucci’s ever-expanding universe, jewellery best embodies this concept of longevity. After all, diamonds are forever.

It’s worth noting that Gucci, which has been fur-free from 2018, has committed to using only responsibl­y sourced gold for its jewellery under the Responsibl­e Jewellery Council Chain of Custody scheme since November 2015. All diamonds are also certified as conflict-free by the Kimberley Process.

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 ??  ?? Gemstones in the Hortus Deliciarum collection are intentiona­lly mismatched to achieve “discordant symmetry”, as seen in these lion-head pieces, and Alessandro Michele (right) wearing Gucci high-jewellery earrings
Gemstones in the Hortus Deliciarum collection are intentiona­lly mismatched to achieve “discordant symmetry”, as seen in these lion-head pieces, and Alessandro Michele (right) wearing Gucci high-jewellery earrings
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 ??  ?? Pieces from Gucci’s Hortus Deliciarum collection
Pieces from Gucci’s Hortus Deliciarum collection
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 ??  ?? Heart and Arrow designs (left) give shape to Hortus Deliciarum’s eternal love theme. Below: This opal snake solitaire is a unique piece
Heart and Arrow designs (left) give shape to Hortus Deliciarum’s eternal love theme. Below: This opal snake solitaire is a unique piece
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