THE ICON AND THE ICONOCLAST

Gold has been a hallmark element of Bulgari since the Art Deco era, and LVMH Week sees its icons drenched in their radiant splendour.

- JONATHAN HO

STREAMLINED, geometric, graphical and stylised, Art Deco is the original, pure modernist expression. Time and again. jewellery designers have turned to the period for inspiration whenever the mood for modernism struck. Poetically, gold jewellery in ancient Greece and Rome was an ostentatious display of wealth and social standing and so, poetically, for Greek silversmith Sotirio Bulgari who founded Bulgari in Italy, drawing upon his cultural heritage and combining the most fascinating materials and aesthetic periods of human history made the most artistic sense.

Eternal and precious, gold has been a hallmark element of Bulgari since the Art Deco era, intricately woven into the fabric of its audacious horological narrative. "The greatest challenge is to give shape to an emotion," Jean-Christophe Babin, CEO of Bulgari, reveals in Bulgari: Beyond Time, "especially when that emotion is measured in time." In the quest to capture timelessness, is there any substance that surpasses goldso precious, mystical and legendary-in its embodiment of eternal elegance?