“Rarity, shortage and wonder make one thing that’s really, really particular,” Victoria Reynolds, Chief Gemologist and Vice President at Tiffany & Co., tells GRAZIA. “However a bit is just not completed till it’s worn. Once you put a creation on, it’s actually transformable. It’s what my function is all about.”
Reynolds – who has been with the New York luxuriate for 35 years – is after all borrowing a sentiment from the long-lasting Tiffany & Co. French jewelry designer Jean Schlumberger who is known for remodeling wonders of nature – learn: gems – into objects of alluring magnificence; sturdy, sculptural, authentic, and unparalleled.
I’m fortunate to be becoming a member of Reynolds in Tokyo for a four-day press tour as she launches the third and remaining chapter of Tiffany & Co.’s BOTANICA: Blue E book 2022, a excessive jewelry assortment which pulls its inspiration from timeless floral motifs from the Tiffany Archives – wisterias, magnolias and orchids – and concurrently celebrates the works of a few of the model’s nice makers: Louis Consolation Tiffany, Paulding Farnham, Schlumberger.
The autumn iteration – which Reynolds presents to worldwide press inside a greenery-filled room at Kudan Home in Chiyoda Metropolis, one hemmed in by an apt blue curtain – showcases the perfect works from Tiffany’s artisans and their astonishing capacity to transpose the naturalistic world onto excessive jewelry.
“When you’ve an organization that’s a Maison, it’s 185 years previous, you’ve this wealth of issues you may choose and select from,” Reynolds says as she touches the ornate Tiffany & Co. Elsa Peretti snake necklace round her neck, an 18k gold serpentine piece she counts as an on a regular basis staple. (Reynolds later nonchalantly notes she kinds her outfits round her jewelry each morning.) “However the secret is having a superb design group. We actually have a bunch of designers which might be merely extraordinary.
“We really designed the whole assortment all of sudden,” she continues. “It was the complexity of the items – and/or if I’d discovered the stones for them – that dictated BOTANICA. We had a really clear imaginative and prescient, primarily based on what the design group gave us for the color palette and it was enjoyable launching it in three completely different elements since you might get pleasure from it over the course of the 12 months, versus launching it at one time. I believe that’s been beautiful as a result of we’ve had many individuals observe the collections.
“To have the ability to launch it in these three beats has been actually gratifying for my group and myself. You get to get pleasure from it, you get to essentially take a look at the distinctive chapters. It’s just like the seasons.”
Reynolds’ job is to journey the world sourcing one of the best diamonds and valuable stones to set into Tiffany & Co.’s jewelry collections, however her curiosity for the magnificent stemmed early in her childhood. As a nine-year-old, Reynolds made her first go to to a Tiffany & Co. retailer and, whereas taking a look at a brooch for her mom, she recollects as we speak how mesmerised she was by the diamonds inside it. It’s now the gemologist’s will to seize that very same emotion within the Tiffany shopper.
“I hope individuals fall in love with this assortment. It’s what we aspire to – that they go on a journey with us, that they actually fall in love with a bit of jewelry,” she says. “Whether or not it’s the brooch that my dad acquired my mum or a bit my grandmother gave me, jewelry may be very private and represents a particular second in time. And that then stays with you for the remainder of your life.”
Reynolds additionally tells me about her engagement ring, a diamond with two tsavorites both facet. Sourced in Kenya, a tsavorite is “an attractive stone which is usually mistaken for an emerald,” says Reynolds. “It’s extra nuanced than an emerald, nevertheless, it’s a bit brighter, and it has a really, very clear crystal because it’s a garnet. So it holds a polish and is a little more crisp and good.
“After I was engaged in 1991, I used to be working within the lab as a diamond grader. I used to be surrounded by these unimaginable diamonds and colored gems,” she provides. “There was simply one thing that actually resonated with me about tsavorites. I used to be fortunate sufficient to have the ability to choose a pair that we had and incorporate them into my engagement ring. They’re particular and distinctive. They’ve their very own DNA and they’re actually fairly uncommon.” The magnolia theme of the newest BOTANICA assortment consists of tsavorites, which together with morganites, are referred to as Tiffany & Co.’s “legacy gems” because the Home proudly launched these stones to the world on the flip of the twentieth century.
The wisteria theme of this third BOTANICA assortment is one to be marvelled because it pays homage to Louis Consolation Tiffany’s iconic desk lamps. There’s one within the room the place Reynolds and I are talking, a leaded-glass kaleidoscope of color that she tells me is one in all two that travels with the group all over the place.
“Re-envisioning works of Louis Consolation Tiffany [and then transposing them onto wisteria pieces] is particularly daunting as a result of he was such a genius,” explains Reynolds. “How do you enhance on these unimaginable lamps that actually carry out one of the best of nature? When his lamp was created within the Nineteen Twenties, individuals couldn’t imagine that it really improved on the fantastic thing about a wisteria flower.
“The response of individuals to the necklace has been, in a manner, the identical,” she provides of the Tiffany artisans re-envisioning of the wisteria’s petals with a blue, hand-carved chalcedony and layers of diamonds, sapphires and faceted gems.
The Orchid Curve theme sees the Home reinterpret its historic floral motif right into a myriad of diamond-intensive items and extraordinary gems.
“I might say what actually presents a problem with the orchid is the delicacy and lightness of the flower,” Reynolds explains, pulling out previous sketches of orchids as illustration of their form and type.
“It’s nearly not possible to greatest nature,” she continues. “As a result of nature is the lightness, it’s the sweetness, it’s the color. However nature is ideal so whenever you’re impressed by it, you need to do it higher. You need to work out a special manner that you may by some means take a look at it with a special lens. Once you take a look at a flower as good as an orchid and one which has actually been a significant supply of inspiration for Tiffany for 185 years, you higher do it actually, very well. Had been we humbled? Sure, we had been. I believe we additionally actually imagine in our design group, in our jewellers and the novelty – it’s what makes Tiffany & Co. so nice.
“Was it troublesome? Sure, it was,” she provides. “Did we do it? Sure, we did.”
As Reynolds and I stroll by the gathering, we enter the Schlumberger room the place she kindly lets me attempt on a few completely different diamond rings; one platinum with a crimson spinel and pink sapphires, one other platinum with a ruby. (If a bit of jewelry isn’t completed till it’s worn, please let its journey finish right here on my left hand!) Schlumberger was identified for modernising stately jewels and was notably well-known for his legendary design such because the Hen On The Rock brooch, items Tiffany artisans have recreated for this assortment.
“Greater than another query, I get requested, ‘the place did the chicken come from?’ Is it a pigeon? Is it a cockatoo? What’s it?” laughs Reynolds. “The reality of the matter is, it’s good Schlumberger, it’s a mix of many alternative birds. There’s a sweetness and a wit to it that’s makes it so him.”
He died in Paris in 1987 on the age of 80, the identical 12 months Reynolds began on the Home.
“As a gemologist, what I cherished about Schlumberger was he was sure by nothing,” she says. “He would take turquoise and blend it with diamonds. He would take rubilites and put rubies subsequent to them. They had been these surprising color mixtures that no one actually dared to do as a result of it broke conference. On the coronary heart of what he did, nevertheless, was use gems, not for his or her worth however for his or her magnificence.”
In a nod to Reynolds’ and Tiffany’s iconic designers’ career-long worldwide plights in sourcing solely probably the most spectacularly valuable stones, we current to you Shadow Of The Nymph. Shot in a studio in Paris and lensed by Umberto Gorra, a whimsical creature wanders the pure world accumulating solely probably the most uncommon and treasurable jewels. And when she wears one in all her finds? Nicely, that’s when she really transforms.
SHOP THE TIFFANY & CO. HIGH JEWELLERY COLLECTION
CREATIVE DIRECTION: DANÉ STOJANOVIC & MARNE SCHWARTZ
PHOTOGRAPHY: UMBERTO GORRA
IMAGE DIRECTION: GIANMARCO CHIANESE
FASHION DIRECTION: ANNA CASTAN
HAIR: EDUARDO BRAVO
MAKEUP: MAGALIE MARKAN
MANICURIST: ADRIENNE SOTER
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: JEAN-MARC MONDELET
MODEL: YULIYA B / ELITE
TOP BANNER IMAGE: CLASSIC SHIRT DRESS WITH GATHERED WAIST, NOON BY NOOR, SHOP NOW. FEATHER HEADDRESS, STYLIST’S OWN. EARRINGS IN PLATINUM WITH DIAMONDS, TIFFANY & CO., SHOP THE COLLECTION
