Come Dance With Me

Van Cleef & Arpels captures the dynamic beauty of dance with two new watches from the extraordinary dials collection. The maison’s dance and culture programs manager, serge laurent, tells us more about the house’s long love affair with the art of dance

- Hillary Kang

As beautiful as gemstones are, their beauty is often immutable — that is, they are often fixed and unmoving. Van Cleef & Arpels challenges this with two dynamic new watches from their Extraordinary Dials collection, the Lady Danse and Lady Danse Duo.

The two watches are a loving tribute to the liveliness of Broadway in the ’50s and ’60s — imagine the buzz of Manhattan, the packed theatres that line the streets, the sold-out shows each night, encapsulated into two beautifully realized dials.

On the Lady Danse watch, an agile soloist is depicted at the split second she enters the stage. She wears a dress set with rubies and hemmed with gold against a threedimensional background that gives the illusion of depth: White mother-of-pearl, turquoise, and chrysoprase are worked on individually before being carefully assembled to create the stunning effect.

Meanwhile, the Lady Danse Duo recalls the electricity of New York City as a group of dancers frolic about an iridescent dial of lapis lazuli, turquoise, and white mother-of-pearl.

Van Cleef & Arpels’ relationship with the world of dance — in particular, ballet — is long and storied. It dates back all the way to Louis Arpels; in the ’20s, he would often take his nephew and scion, Claude Arpels, to performances at the Paris Opera.