Van Cleef & Arpels Perlée collection launch at Palais Bulles on the French Riviera
A house owned by the late Pierre Cardin was the setting for the unveiling of Van Cleef & Arpel’s retro-inspired 2022 Perlée jewellery collection.
The Hungarian architect of the extraordinary Palace of Bubbles on the French Riviera had something in common with a family of jewellers who lived in Paris decades before – a love of all things circular.
For Antti Lovag, this was reflected in his decision to design this futuristic house, called Palais Bulles, in the 1970s and make it entirely out of circles, with 10 interconnecting bubbles built on a spectacular clifftop overlooking the bay of Cannes and the Mediterranean Sea.
For Van Cleef & Arpels, founded by Alfred Van Cleef and his brothers-in-law Charles and Julien Arpels in 1906, the preference was reflected in its use of golden beads. This technique first appeared in high jewellery in the 1920s to border a stone, and then spread throughout pieces and collections from the 1940s on, long after the business was run by succeeding generations of the family (it is now owned by Richemont).
In 2008, the bead took centre stage when an entire collection was created from this “small element of décor”. Called Perlée – French for pearl– it consisted of rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces celebrating the gold, rose gold and silver beads that made up each piece.
And although the lives of Van Cleef, the Arpels and Lovag never intersected, their work certainly did on May 31 this year, when the luxury jeweller launched the latest Perlée collection at Lovag’s Palais Bulles on the French Riviera. It was a celebration of all things circular, from the architecture to the jewellery, when the new Perlée bead pieces were unveiled in the bubble-shaped rooms.
“Right angles, by nature, are unnatural,” Lovag has said of his architecture and of Palais Bulles. “Conviviality is a circular phenomenon. The circle structures the way human life is carried out.”
Lovag was commissioned by French industrialist Pierre Bernard to create a holiday home for his family in the early 1970s and it took him 14 years to hand-build Palais Bulles. He first created a metallic frame and then sprayed concentrate onto it to create the different spheres. He finished it in the early 1980s, but Bernard passed away not long after. Fashion designer Pierre Cardin then bought the property, modernised it and turned it into an events space in the 1990s.
The 1200sq m, 29-room house has red ochre exterior walls and white interiors, red stone floors in the passageways, and giant portholes and skylights that overlook the three swimming pools and water features. The brilliant red of the house and blue colours of the pools complement the Mediterranean Sea that Palais Bulles overlooks.
“There are few words that do justice when describing Pierre Cardin’s Bubble House,” declared the local newspaper the Monaco Tribune in 2020. “Its anthropomorphised form mimics the hips of a Bond girl dancing in the opening credits, undulating walls and doorways echoing the 1960s.” It was the striking colours and shapes of Palais Bulles and the fact it looks like it’s straight out of the swinging sixties that drew Van Cleef & Arpels to launch the 2022 Perlée jewellery there.
“The collection is very much about playfulness and colour,” Van Cleef & Arpels CEO and creative director Nicolas Bos tells WISH, “so it felt right to be here on the French Riviera. With its curvy aesthetic, the Palais Bulles – Pierre Cardin’s former home overlooking the Bay of Cannes – echoes the Perlée collection’s spirit. We also wanted to celebrate being together again after the past few years.”
Bos says these pieces are a new chapter for Perlée jewellery, as it is the first time precious and ornamental stones have been incorporated alongside the beautiful gold, silver or rose gold beads.
“Perlée started in 2008 but it has been present in a way since the beginning of Van Cleef & Arpels as the gold bead was one of the techniques that you see in our antique jewellery,” he explains. “There was this idea that gold as precious material would benefit from a more sophisticated technique that would turn it into something more than just a flat surface – something rounded, something that would catch the light. So gold beads have been around for a very long time on high jewellery pieces in the 1950s and 1960s. Then we decided to focus on this small element of décor to see how we can create a collection around it but also bring more abstract shapes to it.”
The 2022 Perlée pieces were inspired by Van Cleef & Arpels’ heritage jewellery from the 1960s and ’70s. New rings have large ornamental stones at the centre – think azure turquoise, orange-red coral, deep green malachite, the glittery blue of lapis lazuli – that reinterpret the aesthetic of Philippine rings created by the French house in 1968. “They combine the stones in bold and colourful compositions, typical of the jewellery of that period,” the notes on the collection read. “These new pieces bring a fresh breath of creativity to the collection, imbuing it with a sunny, pop feel.”
Another set of Perlée rings revealed at Palais Bulles features precious stones such as sapphires, emeralds and rubies for the first time. Inspired by Caroline rings made by Van Cleef & Arpels in the 1970s, these pieces are made of gold beads with 15 rubies, emeralds or sapphires in the middle of an asymmetrical design. Diamonds are front and centre in another ring – which comes in white gold, silver and rose gold – and diamonds are also featured in new Perlée earrings, a cuff and a pendant.
“We have brought back rubies and sapphires, which we haven’t used that much in the past 20 years in everyday jewellery as we traditionally just used them in high jewellery,” Bos says. “It is an interesting way to use precious stones as well as ornamental stones, and in different colour combinations. We are also debuting new watches in the collection that we have been working on for a long time. There was always a dress watch, but now we have more simple watches in Perlée too.”
Bos says the collection was inspired by the 1960s and 1970s for a number of reasons. The period marked the start of everyday pieces at Van Cleef & Arpels, not just high jewellery to be worn at events. It was a trend also seen across fashion labels as well as jewellery houses in Europe.
“The ’60s and ’70s were the golden age of daywear jewellery,” explains Bos. “When you think about the 20th century, you think of the Art Deco period of extraordinary high jewellery, a truly great time of design and innovation. I think the ’60s and ’70s were when precious jewellery developed into a proper category alongside the development of ready-to-wear clothing at the time.
“Designers such as Yves St Laurent were extremely influential in introducing ready-to-wear, which had the same levels of creativity and sophistication as couture, but in a garment that was more readily available. Van Cleef & Arpels took the same approach so you didn’t have to just choose between high jewellery and costume jewellery – we could offer a collection with the traditions of fine jewellery and the quality of the precious stones but that you could wear every day.”
Bos says this evolution in ready-to-wear fashion and jewellery was also a response to changes in the role of women in society. “They adapted to a lifestyle at the time where there was a more independent woman who wanted pieces to wear on a daily basis, to go to work, to go shopping or go pick up the children, instead of just jewellery to wear to a special occasion,” adds Bos.
The CEO and creative director – who has been in his dual role for almost a decade – says there was a “discovery of big, bright colours after a period of more neutral designs” that made it into jewellery and fashion in the ’60s and ’70s. “People tend to reference that period as freedom and fun and music and colours and travels,” Bos explains. “Maybe it was not true and not the case for everyone, but the imagery we associated with it was fun. The period was just after the war and they were rebuilding their lives and people could enjoy themselves, so it feels like an obvious point of reference.”
That obvious point of reference is for our world re-emerging after two years of a pandemic, border closures, lockdown orders, and not a lot of fun or frivolity to be had except on the couch at home (and especially not at an extraordinary house like Palais Bulles on the French Riviera).
The evening when Van Cleef & Arpels revealed its 2022 Perlée collection begins when we arrive at Palais Bulles’ extraordinary metal entrance gate – shaped like a sun surrounded by circles. You enter the architectural feat from the top, so you can’t see anything except unusual red dome shapes emerging from the landscape and a breathtaking view of the coast.
The front door and all the passageways are circular, and after accepting glasses of champagne we veer off to the left, up some stairs and into a low-ceilinged round room. It is all narrow curves and Hobbit-sized doors, and I feel as if I am walking through the set of a futuristic movie that will be revealed as a sound stage with fake walls held up by balsawood supports and film crews huddling behind it, chatting quietly.
The first room reveals not a scene from a movie but equally interesting figures – the craftsmen and women responsible for creating the Perlée pieces. Transplanted from the Van Cleef & Arpels workshops in Paris, the artisans are demonstrating how they painstakingly produced the pieces, creating the tiny beads and emphasising the importance of polishing every single one.
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It is all narrow curves and Hobbit-sized doors, and I feel as if I am walking through the set of a futuristic movie.
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“These daywear pieces may seem simple because the shapes are simpler than high jewellery and there is less combination of large stones, but the amount of work and the attention to detail that goes into these pieces is quite high,” Bos says. “So this seemed like a great opportunity to meet the craftsmen who work with these pieces.”
We head down more stairs to the main passageway, which has massive portholes opening to the lawn, infinity pool and the breathtaking view, and reach the living area, which has been transformed into a gallery of the new Perlée collection. Van Cleef & Arpels hired renowned artist Arthur Hoffner to create sculpture-like pieces to exhibit the jewellery. He used bright blues and pink-coloured forms to hang the necklaces, rings, watches and earrings while enclosing them in another bubble-like shape to highlight the Perlée beads and the architecture of Palais Bulles.
As well as the new pieces, there are the heritage high jewellery and daywear necklaces, earrings and watches from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s that inspired the latest collection. Models dressed in white parade around the exterior and gardens showcasing the Perlée pieces, the jewellery and clothing creating a stark contrast to the ochre-red colour of the bubble house as the setting sun casts a warm glow over this avant-guard architectural marvel.
Dinner is in the outdoor auditorium built next to the house, where round tables covered with white tablecloths and bright pink and purple peonies and sweet peas await. The four-course meal has been created by Michelin-starred chef Mauro Colagreco, whose restaurant Mirazur, in Merton, just north of Nice, was voted the world’s best in 2019. The Italian-Argentine chef conjured food to match the incredible colours of both the Perlée collection and Palais Bulles; there is poached blue lobster dressed with pink hibiscus powder vinaigrette, a warm carpaccio of cooked beetroot with caviar cream, and local fish with spring vegetables and pink and orange edible flowers.
“It has been the first time in three years we have all come together,” says Bos in a speech before the fireworks begin to signal the end of this incredible evening. “We have been waiting for this moment for a long time and I couldn’t think of a better place to celebrate than here at Palais Bulles, which is an extraordinary house created by visionaries. Tonight we transformed Palais Bulles into Palais Perlée.”