Bulgari put its star stone from its newest excessive jewellery assortment beneath the highlight in a brand new documentary movie detailing the making of the extraordinary piece.

Contained in the Dream, which premiered this week on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, is headlined by appearances by eight present “it” ladies—actresses Zendaya, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, supermodel Lily Adridge, vogue icon Chiara Ferragni and singer Lalisa—however the true star of the present is a 93.83-carat emerald within the Serpenti Hypnotic Emerald necklace. The movie begins in Jaipur, the place it follows Bulgari’s long-time inventive director Lucia Silvestri as she visits gem sellers who greet her like an previous household buddy. It rapidly cuts to a scene the place Silvestri rejects batch after batch of gem stones—none of which had been deemed appropriate for Bulgari. Choosing up three small instances holding suites of gems, Silvestri examines them earlier than decidedly telling the vendor, “No, no, no.” She appears up politely however expectantly as if to say, “I solely anticipate one of the best.” The vendor scrambles.

So, what did take to get a “sure” out of Bulgari’s demanding inventive director? A 21,000-carat tough emerald that the vendor agrees to chop for Bulgari, though the household enterprise has been holding onto it for 25 years. “We are able to solely minimize this for one thing very particular,” he explains. “Our household has been on this enterprise 50 years and we’ve by no means seen something near this.” The ensuing 93.83-carat rock, which earlier than reducing weighed just below 9 kilos (likened to “the scale of a child” within the movie) yields not simply the practically 100-carat oval cabochon set into the Serpenti Hypnotic Emerald, however two or three different 100-carat gems and 15 or 20 satellite tv for pc emeralds weighing between 10 to 30 carats every.

The movie then follows the gem by means of manufacturing at Bulgari’s “jewellery laboratory” in Rome, the place it’s included into a large torchon-style necklace designed in a ribbon-style swirl set with diamonds and smaller emeralds. It culminates in a large gem-set serpent head, whose mouth holds the heavyweight emerald. From there, the necklace finds its approach to the neck of actress Zendaya, who wore it to final 12 months’s Cannes Worldwide Movie Competition. In keeping with Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin the necklace, “stole the present from our primary competitor, the sponsor of the pageant [Cartier].” The necklace has since been offered for $3.5 million.

“We thought it could be extraordinary to supply the general public with a backstage take a look at excessive jewellery,” says Babin. “We felt that the luxurious trade, notably in relation to jewellery, is obsessed by the purple carpet, by the occasion the place one thing is launched to purchasers and the media as a completed masterpiece, however they hardly have any concept of what it takes earlier than you get there.” It takes 1,000 hours simply to chop the gem after which one other 2,200 hours of manpower for its remaining setting.

For these in search of a greater understanding of why excessive jewellery is so astronomically valued, Contained in the Dream, produced by Terminal9 Studios and directed by Matthieu Menu, might be seen on Prime Video. Bulgari is now an official sponsor of the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, which hopefully means there will probably be extra extraordinary jewellery tales sooner or later.