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-the-box thinking to create exceptional pieces.

What did you hope to achieve with this project?

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’ve 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 bloomed in them the next day.