Art of Seduction
Louis Vuitton’s Blossom High Jewellery Collection is all about the seductive power of nature, the company’s Vice President of Watches and Jewellery tells Maina A. Harjani 104
ndonesiatatler got the chance to grab a casual chat with Hamdi Chatti, Vice President of Louis Vuitton’s Watches and Jewellery department in picturesque St Tropez during the brand’s launch of the Blossom High Jewellery Collection. Here’s what the witty man had to say.
For a number of years, Louis Vuitton has been securing a more powerful presence in the world of high jewellery. What have been some of the challenges in this area? The challenges have largely been because jewellery is an industry that has been established for a long time, so we needed to find a way to penetrate it. In order to do this, we needed to bring something unique and fresh to the table in terms of both style and the way we mix and match our pieces, as well as how we want our products to be worn. If we speak about high jewellery, the idea was to bring in new materials and new stones of impeccable quality and mix them with other materials. This results in designs that are recognisable and strong, but at the same time easy to wear.
What can you tell us about the Blossom High Jewellery Collection? Well, it’s a beautiful story. Our design team generally doesn’t get to work until they see the gemstones to be used in each piece. We select our high-quality gemstones from all over the world and then show them to the designers. With this collection, the inspiration—and one of the gemstones our designers picked out— was the petal. And that was the beginning of the Blossom High Jewellery Collection: each piece has been created with, and around, the petal. The collection of the gemstones took 10 years, while the creation of the collection itself took two years.
the second the design. In order to fix the gemstones into a neckpiece, earring, bracelet or ring, different layers of different materials are created to hold the stones. Some of these are very unusual designs, but that is what adds to the overall beauty of each gemstone.
Where is Louis Vuitton’s jewellery workshop located and how many people work in the department? All our designers work in-house and our workshop is on the top floor of the Louis Vuitton store at the Place Vendôme in Paris. While not everyone is behind a desk, the jewellery department is a team of some 30 people ranging from the designers and stone selectors to the craftsmen.
What kind of potential does jewellery have in the market? The jewellery industry has been around for centuries, and personally I have an emotional connection with jewellery. Our pieces are all natural and one cannot force nature. So our job here in Louis Vuitton is to emphasise the beauty of nature through our collections. Jewellery also has great potential in the market: apart from being a more femaleoriented segment, jewellery has an emotional connection that comes with it. In the highjewellery industry, most of the players are treading the same path, but we are young players in the industry, which gives us the freedom to create and recreate. We are not rigid in our decisions and have the guts to try new materials. However, we do it the right way because we are fortunate enough to have the most skilled people on our team.
Each piece in the Blossom High Jewellery Collection has a story to tell, but, in just a few words, what is the overall story? To me, it’s a whole new dynamic. As well as the blossom, the reason that flowers are beautiful is because they need to seduce the bees that feed on their pollen. The reason flowers exist is because of this. As such, I believe that the Blossom High Jewellery Collection is really all about seduction.