The Best in Jewelry, From a Dazzling Hermes Necklace to Bulgari’s Reimagined Serpenti
The Big Idea: Resetting the Archive
For jewelry houses with long histories, digging through the archives and paying homage to established icons is a perennial practice. These reinterpretations are done with such frequency that connoisseurs and enthusiasts alike can easily match legendary motifs—Serpenti, Anchor Chain, Bird on a Rock—to the brands that created them (for the uninitiated, that would be Bulgari, Hermès, and Tiffany, respectively).
But recently, the industry’s biggest names haven’t just tweaked decades-old designs but instead have looked to reinvent them.
At Bulgari, the snake-shaped Serpenti—applied to everything from chokers to watches—is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. The latest iteration eliminates the head and tail, allowing the eye to focus on the serpent’s body in a new necklace, which creates a sleek, slithering form around the neck, adorned with onyx, emeralds, and diamonds.
At Hermès, the Chaîne d’ancre, or Anchor Chain—available as a bracelet or a single drop earring, among other pieces—is currently in its 86th year of service. This time around, the French maison engaged in dramatic shadow play to design its Chaîne d’ombre, in which white-diamond segments are offset by larger versions pavé-set with a dégradé of black spinels and blue sapphires. The high-jewelry piece is a tour de force, despite recycling a design predating WWII.
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The trend of looking backward for inspiration is so prevalent that even independent jewelers with slimmer archives are going back to their roots. James de Givenchy of Taffin made his name pioneering the use of ceramic paired with precious gems, as well as combining marble, rubber, wood, and pebbles with fine stones. His latest mélange is a bracelet of platinum wrapped in plastic and topped with a 12.3-carat kite-shaped diamond. The piece is reminiscent of the company’s instantly recognizable rings featuring colorful ceramic curling, encircling, or twisting around hefty white and colored diamonds. And New York City–based Brazilian designer Ana Khouri pumped up her signature sculptural designs with bigger and bolder gems, including a 20.65-carat yellow diamond and a 5.54-carat pink diamond, which debuted at TEFAF, the European Fine Arts Foundation, in May 2022.
But at Tiffany & Co., a design shift was entirely unnecessary for the famous Bird on a Rock brooch. Designed by Jean Schlumberger in 1956, it has remained a status symbol for 67 years. Among the first to purchase one was the late socialite Bunny Mellon, and it has since been regarded as a must-have collector’s item among the well-heeled. Recently, though, Tiffany has made an effort to lift its bird to new heights by courting a new demographic: guys. In February 2022, Odell Beckham Jr. was spotted sporting a large citrine Bird on a Rock when he arrived at Super Bowl LVI. A month later, Jay-Z—a Tiffany ambassador—pinned one to the lapel of his tux at the 94th Academy Awards. Michael B. Jordan upped the ante at this year’s Oscars by wearing not one but two of the brooches, with one bird perched atop a 32-plus-carat pink morganite and another standing on a green tourmaline of over 58 carats.
Not to be outdone, if rumors are to be believed, Bulgari may be planning a men’s-size Serpenti watch. Which just goes to show that everything old is new again—and vice versa.
