From Van Cleef & Arpels to Cartier, discover the talents behind iconic jewellery
These forward-thinking artists, representing the best of their generations, disrupted the jewellery scene in the best way imaginable as they defied the rules of convention and dreamt up a whole new world—one where the possibilities are infinite—for men, women and everyone else in between.
From Van Cleef & Arpels's breathtaking ZIp necklace to Cartier's LOVE bracelet, these are the creative minds behind the Maison's who made wonders in jewellery design.
The Trailblazer: Renée Puissant (B. 1897)
Van Cleef & Arpels was already a brand steeped in renown when Renée Puissant ascended its helm in 1926. Inheriting the house from her parents and co-founders Estelle Arpels and Alfred Van Cleef, Puissant brought Van Cleef & Arpels into a new era of elegance and influence with her creative vision and surprisingly brazen attitude towards fine jewellery. Her many contributions to the house would go on to define it as the ultimate tastemaker.
Among her most notable masterworks was the Zip necklace. A tribute to the couture scene, the necklace adopted the likeness of a zip fastener. The idea of it came from the Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson, whose love story with King Edward VIII had been marked by a number of Van Cleef & Arpels creations. She was the one who suggested to the artistic director to create a piece based on the zipper after it started appearing on garments at the time.
Taking the challenge in her stride, Puissant eventually came up with the original necklace that was made of two gold ribbons bordered with tiny hooks that fit into one another and embellished with diamonds. Granted the freedom of movement like a real slide fastener, the necklace parades the brand’s now-iconic savoir faire in crafting transformable jewels as it converts into a bracelet upon closing—a cutting-edge yet classic design that is perennially popular.
The Rebel: Aldo Cipullo (B. 1935)
At a time when Art Deco jewellery, defined by its fantastical façade and dense concentration of gemstones, was par for the course, Aldo Cipullo made the bold move to veer off course by contemplating a more streamlined silhouette. His first-ever design for Cartier, the Love bracelet, foreshadowed the future of jewellery with its ultra-sleek appearance and seminal design that entailed the piece being fastened to the wrist with a special screwdriver.
Cipullo joined Cartier’s Fifth Avenue flagship in 1969 and wasted no time in asserting himself as a force to be reckoned with. The designer’s lifelong experience—his father Giuseppe Cipullo who ran a costume jewellery business in Rome had equipped him with everything he needed to know—proved to be an asset to the maison and his scholastic background in architecture and design just shot his worth through the roof.
Only a couple of years into his tenure, the non-conformist Cipullo put together another invention that’s now regarded as a cult icon of the seventies: the Nail bracelet. His love for the hardware store, which he deemed his second home, had materialised into this unisex creation that simultaneously embodied the gritty glamour of New York. Its graphic potency and symbolic power have since been preserved at Cartier and it is now formally known as the Juste un Clou.
The Modernist: Gaia Repossi (B. 1986)
One of the most exciting names in jewellery today is Gaia Repossi. An heiress and the reigning creative director of Repossi, a historic Italian jewellery house founded by her great-grandfather in 1920, Repossi swiftly disentangled the brand from the oppressive sameness of the fine jewellery world when she took the driver seat in 2007. The then 21-year-old began tapping into the zeitgeist of the modern era and injected the brand with a contemporary aesthetic.
Her Berbere collection that debuted a few years after was a runaway success and it re-established the house as an influential player in the fashion and high jewellery societies. Repossi had seemingly made full use of her passion for painting—she studied it at the Beaux Arts of Paris—and master’s degree in archeology as she reinterpreted the multi-line pattern tattoos on the hands of the nomads inhabiting the Northern African desert, the Tuareg Berbers, for the collection.
Done with an unexpectedly sleek composition that saw her pushing the boundaries of traditional jewellery techniques in conjunction with architecture, the Berbere range highlighted Repossi’s penchant for sculptural designs and small pavé diamonds over large stones. After all, she does often cite the works of Alexander Calder, Cy Twombly and Franz West, as well as the brutalist, minimalist and Bauhaus movements as her unfailing sources of reference.
