Fiorever Young

With a luxurious new diamond collection, Italian jeweller Bulgari aims to crack the elusive millennial market. GRACE O’NEILL says they’re destined to succeed.

- Grace O’Neill

AS A FASHION journalist, your professional life is littered with an above-average number of pinch-me moments. Travelling to Dubai with Bulgari this past October was a smorgasbord of them. Exhibit A: I was collected from the airport by a Maserati (Bulgari owns a fleet) and driven to the Bulgari Hotel, a mammoth fortress of luxury with 100 rooms, 20 villas, a yacht club and, naturally, a private marina with space for 50 boats. Exhibit B: less than two hours after landing, I was barrelling through sand dunes in a 4WD en route to a three course dinner under the stars in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Exhibit C: the following day, we drove to Abu Dhabi to visit the recently opened Louvre — an architectural feast with dozens of pieces on loan from its Parisian counterpart — before being whisked back to Dubai to spend the afternoon drinking tea and eating artisanal chocolates with Lady Kitty Spencer, niece of Princess Diana, cousin of Princes Harry and William.

But enough bragging; the salient point is this: Bulgari knows how to play host. Dozens of media and a handful of the brand’s key ambassadors were jetted out for the Middle Eastern jaunt — three days of refined lavishness to fete the launch of Fiorever, the brand’s new high jewellery collection, made exclusively with diamonds. “We wanted to create something for millennials,” says Lucia Silvestri, Bulgari’s creative director. “The challenge with this collection was to use diamonds to design something that is versatile but also stays true to our DNA.”