03
Feathered Fantasy
CURATING TIME SINCE 1950 seddiqi.com
LET TIME SLIP AWAY He wandered the land and made marks in the sand, eventually slipping away from Time. Time watched and smiled at the daydreamer for a while before revealing his presence again.
#MakeTimeYourOwn
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Royal Orchid
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B ah r e i n | 22 – 26 n ovemB er
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EDITORIAL
PUBLISHING
Editor in Chief MOJEH IZADPANAH
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Senior Editorial Assistant Sophie pasztor Dmitri Ruwan
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LOUIS FOURTEEN FOR MOJEH
ART
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Deputy Art Director Richard Lee Graphic Designer Balaji Mahendran Contributing Photographers Anthony Arquier Laura Marie Cieplik Ziga Mihelcic Julia Chernih
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WWW.MOJEH.COM Louis Fourteen for MOJEH Follow us on Twitter @MOJEH_Magazine MOJEH Swiss Representative Office: Rue de Rive 4, 1204 Geneva, Switzerland For the UAE printed by Emirates Printing Press LLC. Distribution- UAE: Al Nisr Distribution LLC. Qatar: Dar Al Sharq. Bahrain: Jashanmal & Sons BSC (C). Oman: United Media Services LLC. Lebanon: Messageries Du Moyen-Orient The publishers regret that they cannot accept liability for error or omissions contained in this publication, however caused. The opinions and views contained in this publication are not necessary those of the publishers. Readers are advised to seek specialist advice before acting on information contained in this publication which is provided for general use and may not be appropriate for the readers particular circumstances. The ownership of trademark is acknowledged, therefore reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. All credits are subjects to change. Copyright HS MEDIA GROUP FZ LLC 2011
2
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The wider world Welcome to MOJEH Jewellery & Watches 2017, where we bring together the key pieces, trends and pioneering people you should know about. While many are beguiled by the beauty of a precious gemstone or intrigued by the intricacy of a horological complication (and quite rightly so), an interesting yet often forgotten aspect of jewellery and watches is not the pieces themselves, rather the wider world around them. Take, for example, model and Hollywood actress Freida Pinto. A prominent campaigner for women’s rights, the star is also a brand ambassador for Audemars Piguet. We speak to her on everything from her take on gender equality to her penchant for a vintage Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar on page 38. This co-operation between high-profile brand ambassadors and high-end watch and jewellery brands is becoming an essential part of the industry today. It certainly works for the celebrities, but are the brands getting value for money? We explore the subject further on page 70. While the jewellery and watch industries aren’t quite as subject to change as the world of fashion, there is a certain dynamism that has been evident in both over the past year, with industry trends such as pink gemstones (page 30) and the use of bronze in watches (page 44) coming to the fore. Also in this issue, we meet the names shaping jewellery and watch industries, from Dubai-based jewellery designer Salama Khalfan and the fearless flying brothers behind British aviation watch brand Bremont, to freelance watch design king Eric Giroud and the eccentric founder of groundbreaking Belgian watch brand Ressence. Of course, the thing that links all these great industry talents is an appreciation for the very things that make the jewellery and watch businesses tick: the pieces themselves. And in the following pages, we have brought together the world’s most beautiful jewellery and wonderful watches for your reading pleasure. Enjoy the issue. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @Mojeh_I and write to me at editor@mojeh.com
Mojeh Izadpanah Editor in Chief
Editor’s Letter
www.adler.ch
32. The Great Diamond Dilemma Now flawless diamonds can be grown and sold for a fraction of the price of the real deal, is the diamond industry under threat?
38. The Making Of Freida Hollywood star Freida Pinto opens up about how fashion influences her sense of self, as well as gender inequality and her illustrious career so far.
44. The Bronze Age Bronze has long been eschewed by traditional watch brands in favour of more stable materials, but is the industry finally ready embrace the Bronze Age?
50. Man Behind The Watch Face
70. Player Power
Eric Giroud, one of the most influential watch
Nowadays brand ambassadors are more important
designers of our time, reveals his source of inspiration
to watch companies than ever, but are the brands
and why he’d never give up working on his own.
getting good value for money?
54. A Time For Change
74. Breaking Barriers
As watchmakers woo women with increasingly grand
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Benoit
dials and complex designs, we examine the female
Mintiens, the maverick founder of Belgian watch
forces driving a change in the industry.
company Ressence.
contents
118. The Statement Affair Elevate subdued styling with statement stones and jewellery designs the speak for themselves.
132. Set in Stone The timeless elegance of the season’s high jewellery sparkles against ancient relics of times gone by.
142. Storied Stones As precious stones continue to command our attention, we explore the historical significance of our favourite coloured gems.
80. Born To Fly
184. Lost & Found
Despite losing their father to a tragic flying accident,
Why do luxury jewellery brands place so much
Bremont co-founders Giles and Nick English have
importance on tracking down and buying back their
never lost their passion for aviation.
own iconic pieces?
84. Keeping Time
202. Domestic Bliss
Keep it smart and use elegant timepieces as the
The works of Masie Broadhead and Ted Noten are
perfect accompaniment to a modern gentleman’s
perfect examples of how jewellery can elevate art
eveningwear aesthetic.
from the comfort of domesticity.
Safe AND SOUND With space for 60 individually wound timepieces, a range of lavish features and its very own pendulum clock, the Döttling Grand Circle could well be the ultimate in high-security watch safes.
The following pages contain a veritable treasure trove of the finest timepieces and most exquisite jewellery anywhere on the planet, but what’s the use in owning an enviable collection if you haven’t got anywhere to keep it? Thankfully, German safemaker Döttling has just the solution for the watch collector who wants to keep his prized possessions safe but still show them off within the comfort of his own home: the Grand Circle. With 52 individually controllable watch winders surrounding a limited-run, handmade Naeschke pendulum clock that runs for an impressive four weeks with just a single wind, this is a watch
safe of absolutely epic proportions. And it’s not just watches the GrandCircle is good for; the base of the safe also accommodates the world’s smallest hi-fi subwoofer by Elac, a VDS Class 2 high-security safe with certified fire protection, jewellery drawers, a minibar, a climate-controlled humidor crafted from Spanish cedar wood and, just for good measure, an extra eight watch winders, taking the total capacity to 60 timepieces. An extraordinary treasure in itself, limited to a single series of just 20 hand-numbered and signed pieces, the Grand Circle is likely to become as prized a part of your collection as any of your pieces.
THE SAFE
Sweet surprise A. Lange & Söhne’s Lange 1 Time Zone gets a sumptuous honey gold case to mark a special date in the company’s history. October 25, 2016, saw A. Lange & Söhne release a new special edition: the Lange 1 Time Zone in honey gold. The date is no coincidence, as it marks exactly 22 years and one day since the first Lange collection was presented in the Dresden residential palace by company founder Walter Lange and his partner Günter Blümlein; among the collection was the original Lange 1. But why is the company celebrating the day after the 22-year anniversary of the original October 24, 1994, press conference? Well, back then the event was covered almost exclusively by daily newspapers, meaning that the coverage wouldn’t appear in print until the next day. Therefore, the outsize date had been set to the 25th. Since then, all photos of Lange watches with an outsize date display have shown the same number: 25. Limited to just 100 pieces, the special edition also features a subtle callback to that famous press conference, with the Central European Time on the rotating city ring represented by Dresden instead of Berlin, as it is on the original model. Other subtle changes to the famous face include blue dots between the city names and GMT instead of the usual red, while the previously black peripheral ring of the second time zone now shares the same blue hue. The standout change, though, is the use of 18-karat honey gold for the case; an exclusive material, it is significantly harder than other gold alloys. Lange has a sweet tooth when it comes to honey gold. In 2010, the brand debuted the Homage to FA Lange Tourbograph ‘Pour Le Mérite’, the Homage to FA Lange 1815 Moonphase and the Homage to FA Lange Lange 1 Tourbillon, all to mark the 165th year since Ferdinand Adolph Lange first founded the company; then in 2015 the brand released the 1815 200th Anniversary FA Lange in honey gold. This latest release is certainly a welcome addition to the honey gold-clad collection.
long game The
The Adler family jewellery business has been running for more than 130 years. Here, we ask the latest generation to take the reins, Karen Adler, what the secret is to the Viennese maison’s continued success. The maison has an incredibly rich history. Tell us how it all began… Adler is a family business launched by our great grandfather, Jacques, in 1886 in Istanbul. In 1972, the third generation of our family, Franklin, Carlo and Leylâ, moved the company to Geneva, where it still has its HQ. We then expanded internationally opening a boutique in Hong Kong in 1983, and another in London in 1984. We also started to travel very regularly to the Middle East [Adler jewellery is available at Istana at The Dubai Mall as well as the Four Seasons Resort Dubai] and we now have boutiques in Gstaad, Tokyo, Doha and Baku. Franklin, Carlo and Leylâ Adler handled the business for almost 50 years, and in 2015, they happily handed over the reins to the fourth generation, Allen, Daisy and I. We are now responsible for perpetuating the Adler legacy. How has the company managed to maintain its success? Always remaining true to the original ethos underpinning the brand: a warm welcome, friendly atmosphere and bespoke service are all values of a good jewellery maison. Our family has pioneered new jewellery techniques and the use of original materials, such as wood, silk, carbon and titanium; we take risks to produce daring pieces. Our techniques kick-in at the production stage; for example, titanium is an extremely hard metal, so when we
The M a i s o n
start working with it we have to redesign the tools to make them more resistant than regular tools used for a gold production. Similarly, carbon is a hard material that is difficult to shape, but its unique texture and earthly colour give new possibilities to jewellers. Carbon is discreet, diamonds are flashy; with Adler’s daring new combination, you can be both at the same time. How does Adler source its stones? The company controls all stages of the creative process, from choosing and buying the finest gemstones to polishing and design, to customising sales in its exclusive boutiques. All of our suppliers are affiliated with the Kimberley process that regulates the ethical sourcing of diamonds. Adler has been pursuing a rigorous ethics and environment policy for several years, and as for coloured stones, we’ve been working with the same suppliers for over two generations. We’re particularly drawn to the ‘Shinsei’ collection. What is the inspiration? In 2016, we launched this exclusive line, which means ‘renewal’ in Japanese. Inspired by a traditional Japanese textile pattern of one of my grandmother Juliette’s ancient kimonos, this line is the subtle fusion of family emotions and traditions. It is very technical and uses demanding materials such as carbon and mother of pearl.
Nat u r e ’ s
F i n e st World-class jewellery designer Cindy Chao uses her master skillset to capture nature in its purest forms for her Four Seasons Collection.
I
Words by Sophie Pasztor
t’s the untainted, transitional cycle of revolving seasons that has captivated the innovative mind of jewellery designer, Cindy Chao. Her fascination with the organic evolution of nature has inspired her signature over the years, and most recently become her muse for her Four Seasons collection. Delving into the progression of life, Chao imagines the effects of each season by reflecting on the beauty between stillness and movement in nature. Using a 360-degree gem-setting technique to position each stone in a meticulous stride and convey a sense of realism in her designs, the final result can only be described as remarkable. Chao’s works are both life-like and fantastical, as she employs her technical expertise in sculpture with an inventiveness to convey
her conceptual vision. Her extraordinary collection sees a beautifully crafted Kunzite Rose Bangle constructed from a stunning cushion-cut natural kunzite, totalling 70.46 carats, set against 42.36-carat diamonds with three-piece conch pearls and 3.57-carat pink sapphires. The stones are then delicately moulded to a blend of 18-karat white gold, 18-karat rose gold and silver. A striking pair of matching Kunzite Floral Earrings is also included in Chao’s Four Seasons collection, bearing two gorgeous oval-shaped kunzites at a total of 135.70 carats. There is also a 4.47-carat brilliant-cut diamond, 1.63 carats of yellow diamonds and four Conch Pearls totaling 4.06 carats, meticulously set against 18-karat white gold, 18-karat rose gold and silver.
Earrings, kunzites, diamonds, yellow diamonds, conch pearls, silver, yellow gold, rose gold | Bangle, kunzite, diamonds, conch pearls, pink sapphires, lacquer, white gold, silver, rose gold, CINDY CHAO
Temple De
Cartier’s new flagship boutique opens in Ginza, Japan.
T H E B O U TI Q U E
Words by Dmitri Ruwan
Cartier
P
olished platinum, glittering gold, dazzling diamonds and calibrated fuchsia rubies intertwine to form a brilliantly moulded brooch in the distinct shape of a Japanese obi belt. This is just one of the many exceptional pieces created by Cartier in the 19th Century and is heavily influenced by the Japonisme movement. This was a time when Asian arts proliferated in Europe and inspired the innovative ideas of designers and creative types alike, who were constrained by the rigid academic prescriptions of the time. The most striking example of this today would have to be the opening of the new Cartier boutique in Ginza, Tokyo, which pays homage to the Maison’s legends and heritage, in addition to its timeless luxury. Like a gilded palace from ancient folklore or a magnificent piece of jewellery, Cartier’s Ginza boutique is a golden masterpiece spanning more than 1,000 square metres over four floors. Architect Sylvain Dubuisson elegantly blends the brand’s Parisian essence with historic references to Japanese culture, most notable in the exterior of this regal and majestic structure. It mesmerises onlookers with an opulent and decadent pattern that resembles the illusion of Shoji (Japanese screens), traditional paper and woodcuts. This extravagant East-meets-West concept is similarly applied to the building’s refurbished interiors. All designed and inspired by the illustrious Bruno Moinard, furnishings differ on each floor, allowing for a unique and highly customised experience for each privileged customer. Every floor and ceiling carefully segregates each client, enabling the ultimate in privacy, as any refined jeweller’s establishment should. The Jeanne Toussaint salon on the ground floor specialises in jewellery and high jewellery, while the Louis Cartier and Santos-Dumont salons on the first floor house men’s and ladies’ watches. The Diamond salon on the second floor accommodates engagement rings, contemporary diamond jewellery, and special orders. The boutique’s opening also reflects Cartier and Japan’s storied history, which dates back as far as 1887. It serves as a celebration of cultural unity, which has evolved in Cartier over the years through collections inspired by a diversified range of people. This variation, undoubtedly, makes Cartier the universally heralded jeweller of our time.
Dress to impress The likes of Chanel, Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Fendi might be better known for their clothing, but as these four fabulous pieces prove, their watches are every bit as impressive.
Chanel Première Flying Tourbillon with Baguette-Cut Diamonds For this exceptional piece, Chanel blends the watchmaking excellence required to include a highly technical flying tourbillon with the inimitable elegance required to stylise the complication as the brand’s signature camellia. Limited to just 12 exquisite pieces, the watch features an 18-karat white gold case set with 47 baguette-cut diamonds, a bezel of the same material set with 42 baguette-cut diamonds and 52 brilliant-cut diamonds, a black high-tech ceramic dial, an 18-karat white gold tourbillon cabochon set with 19 brilliantcut diamonds, a crown of the same material set with 16 baguette-cut diamonds and 11 brilliant-cut diamonds, and an 18-karat white gold bracelet set with a generous 282 baguette-cut diamonds and 254 brilliant-cut diamonds. Not to mention, a manual-winding mechanical movement and 40-hour power reserve.
TR E NDS
Louis Vuitton LV Fifty Five For the LV Fifty Five, Louis Vuitton takes its inspiration from the trademark travel trunks that gained notoriety for the brand in the 19th Century. Nuanced hints of the iconic trunks are present on the watch, such as the V-shaped hour markers at the three quarter positions and the LV signature at the hour marker, as well as the discreet and finely engraved winding crown – a subtle reminder of the heads of the trunk rivets. While the standard pink gold version comes with metal plaques, riveted and engraved with the Louis Vuitton name, on this pink gold and diamond version, the plaques are instead adorned with diamonds, contributing to the generous 2.46 carats of diamonds present in total.
Hermès Médor Serti Baguette Traditional techniques and cutting-edge technologies combine in the production of the stunning Médor Serti Baguette by Hermès. With its design inspired by the classic harnesses and dog collars the brand used to make in its early days, the timepiece is adorned with an intricate gemstone mantle comprising hundreds of baguette-cut diamonds spread across the dial, case and even the buckle. Harking back to the days when women were discouraged from wearing timepieces, the face of the Médor Serti Baguette is hidden from view, revealing itself only when its pyramid-shaped, diamond-clad cover pivots to one side at the press of an invisible button.
Fendi Policromia You know a timepiece is special when it comes with a letter from the designer, and this one-ofa-kind piece – which comes with a personal note from Delfina Delettrez Fendi – is most certainly just that. The dial stands out thanks to the contrast between the distinctive deep blue lapis lazuli and shimmering white mother of pearl – and, of course, the 24 brilliant-cut white diamonds set into the central area of yellow gold. The 38mm case comes in polished 18-karat yellow gold set with 79 brilliantcut white diamonds, 45 baguette-cut white diamonds and nine baguette-cut blue sapphires, all given an anti-reflective treatment to ensure the time is always visible, even through the glare of the sun.
I n The
Whether part of an exuberant ring, secret watch or choker necklace, rose-tinted gemstones are exquisitely romantic, and their prices have skyrocketed at recent auctions.
Above: Platinum ring with 10.04-carat padparadscha sapphire, black lacquer and brilliant-cut diamonds, CARTIER
The T r e n d
Image by Vincent Wulveryck Š Cartier 2012
Words by Annie Darling
The 15.38-carat Unique Pink was sold for AED 118 million
S
otheby’s beat its own extraordinary world record for a jewellery sale in early 2016, amassing AED 643 million at an evening auction in Geneva, where a pink diamond was sold for AED 118 million. The exceptional 15.38-carat Unique Pink is the largest fancy vivid pink pear-shaped diamond ever offered at auction. Pink gemstones can make a jewellery purchase 10 to 20 times more expensive than counterparts with similar, high-quality white diamonds. Their sumptuously romantic colour combinations have made these precious stones the most sought-after gems in the world. Among the most affluent jewel connoisseurs, their scarcity is a key factor in their price and desirability. The Argyle Diamond Mine in the Kimberley region of Western Australia supplies 90 to 95 per cent of the world’s pink diamonds, and will be exhausted by 2020. Each jewel’s hue is fashioned by an extremely rare, naturally occurring slippage of the crystallographic lattice in the Earth’s stone as it forms deep within the crust. According to Christie’s, a mere one in 10 million pink diamonds possess a colour pure enough to be graded as fancy vivid, making handmade creations and delicate pieces ethereal delicacies. The Haute Joaillerie industry is thriving and pink (the hue dubbed by Diana Vreeland to be the “navy blue of India”) has become a distinctive feature of the most desirable pieces. Whether you prefer the shocking bubblegum pinks favoured by Christian Lacroix; the pastel tones employed by John Galliano; or the punk blushes seen
in Riccardo Tisci’s earliest couture collections for Givenchy, there are plenty of high jewellery designers to choose from. Chaumet’s Hortensia collection’s angel-skin pink opals and round-cut candyfloss sapphires are sculpted into a plethora of floral arrangements. Meanwhile De Grisogono blends sugar-sweet tourmalines, cabochoncut opals and pink sapphires with rosé gold. Giampiero Bodino’s Corona collection opts for splashes of hot magenta in their majestic avant-garde designs, which hark back to the shrouded mysteries surrounding the Agra Diamond. First recorded in India in 1526, the Agra Diamond passed through the hands of Mughal emperors, colonial adventurers, German royalty and an obscure Scottish collector, whose family buried it in a strongbox at the bottom of the garden for the duration of the Second World War. The covetable 24.78-carat pink Graff Pink diamond is another notable treasure. It was auctioned for a whopping AED 169 million at Sotheby’s Geneva in 2010, making it the most expensive jewel ever sold. Boasting the sweet hue of a Ladurée macaron, it had been held in a private collection for 60 years and was previously owned by jeweller Harry Winston. With colour choices aplenty – from super-kitsch Eighties punk pink to the dusty rouge of a courtesan’s boudoir – deep-pocketed collectors will continue to pay high prices for these flawless and spectacular gems.
The great
diamond dilemma
With technological advancements meaning that flawless diamonds can now be grown in a lab and sold for a fraction of the price of the mined variety, the diamond industry could be coming under threat. Are diamonds really forever? MOJEH investigates.
Words by Josh Sims
C
live Hill strikes a note of considerable understatement when he says that his rival’s concerns are “purely commercial”. For decades the diamond industry has spent fortunes protecting its interests by creating an aura around what is, after all, little more than a lump of coal given extra time underground. The gemstone - the hardest substance known to man, and one of the most thermally conductive - has been pitched as the epitome of romance, treasured for its rarity, despite the fact that that rarity is a product mostly of tightly controlled supply, and that other stones are much rarer. Now here comes Clive Hill, with his company Washington Diamonds, saying that he can make a diamond in a lab: faster, flawless and - for all that the diamond industry has dismissed them as ‘synthetic’ - chemically identical to the kind dug out of the ground. So yes, its concerns are “commercial”. Indeed, the very notion that diamonds can now be made, rather than just found, sounds like the stuff of a Hollywood thriller. And it reads like one too: while the idea was first proposed, and attempted, back in the 1890s by chemist Henri Moissan, it took the visit of an American General to a Russian scientist post-Cold War to reboot the inquiry in the modern era. General Carter Clarke was there to buy a new electronic
security device, when Dr Boris Fiegelson ushered him into a side room to show him the blueprints for a washing machine-sized device developed for the Soviet space programme. It was a device that made diamonds. The stunned military man bought three and launched Gemesis, the company that pioneered what is fast becoming a growth market. Growth is the operative word - because that’s how what are coming to be called ‘cultured’ diamonds (after cultured pearls, which, though widely accepted, are similarly no more the product of nature either) are created. A ‘seed’ of carbon material is put into a chamber, to which are added various gases. This is then heated enough to produce a plasma, which causes the carbon to break down and the carbon molecules to attach to the seed. And so it grows. A few days later, the gases are removed and the seed is cracked open - and inside is what nature takes billions of years to produce. It has also cost just 25 per cent of its mined equivalent, and without any of the ethical dilemmas of environment impact or fuelling wars in Africa. Certainly, it would seem that, without some heavy and prolonged marketing to convince shoppers otherwise, the symbolic appeal of the diamond may be on the wane - and all the more so when, technically, it should be possible
T H E TA L K IN G P OINT
How to grow a diamond
1. Carbon material ‘seeds’ are placed in an airtight chamber and subjected to a cocktail of various gases – depending on the desired colour.
2. The chamber is heated enough to produce plasma, which causes the carbon to break down and carbon molecules to attach to the seeds and grow
3. A few days later, the gases are removed from the chamber and the seed is cracked open, revealing the rough diamond.
4. The diamond is then shaped and polished…
5. Before being turned into the finished product.
to combine seeded diamonds to make one of Koh-i-noor proportions: one company, Scio, has already created one of 29 carats. Call it the democratisation of the diamond, but unless a distinct demand for ‘natural’ over ‘man-made’ diamonds develops, the sparkle may fade. Even De Beers, the definitive name in diamonds, is hedging its bets: it owns Element 6, a company that makes diamonds - typically much smaller than the kind worn - for industrial use. For the time being, the jewellery market is, as Tom Chatham, of Chatham Created Gems and Diamonds, puts it, “touchy” about the manmade variety - even among customers who have few qualms in buying his the company’s emeralds, rubies and sapphires. It was its founder, Tom’s father Carroll, who developed one of the first processes for lab-made emeralds back in 1934. He explains that so far supply of mined diamonds is steady. “But,” Chatham adds, unless new technologies are developed that will allow profitable access to even deeper crevices of the Earth’s crust, “We could be out of mined diamonds within 40 years. The supply isn’t endless.” In contrast, to date, the cultured diamond business can’t make enough stones - nor at the right price - to really take advantage of the growing awareness of them. But this will change.
Indeed, the idea that the most important market for cultured diamonds will be those finding their way to some dazzle-struck girlfriend’s finger may be misleading anyway. The properly seismic societal shift that this new technology may usher in could be nothing to do with jewellery, nor even improvements to the diamond-tipped cutting tools commonplace throughout heavy industry - but a lot to do with the likes of creating advanced semi-conductors, lasers, quantum computers and other ground-breaking tools. A diamond, rather than a silicon-based chip proven on paper - could operate at speeds only so far dreamt of. Certainly that is what gets many in this fledgling industry really excited. Clive Hill will speak of the “geek” in him. “These diamonds could really change the world,” he says. “I’d say that within a decade diamond products will be part of many of the technologies we use everyday.” While Mike McMahon, one-time CEO of Scio Diamond Technology, another of the cultured diamond players, puts it even more succinctly, perhaps echoing many a man’s bewilderment at the mesmeric power that diamonds seem to have over their womenfolk. That cultured diamonds could usher in a technological revolution genuinely excites him - because without that “to me, a diamond is still just a frickin’ rock”.
T
h
e
Watchman Boasting an enviable collection of rare and valuable timepieces, Bader Belselah is one of the UAE’s most knowledgeable watch collectors. Here, he gives us a sneak peek at some of his most treasured items.
Words by Dmitri Ruwan
From top: PATEK PHILIPPE 5235G | F.P. JOURNE Chronometre Bleu BOVET Arabic dial 50-piece limited edition H.MOSER & CIE Concept Funky Blue | HARRY WINSTON Midnight Skeleton | VACHERON CONSTANTIN 1921
T
here are two types of watch collectors in this world: those drawn to the shiniest and most ostentatious objects, and the rather better informed type who appreciate the finer details of horology. Before our interview with Bader Belselah, we’re not sure which side of the coin he will represent. However, the moment the Emirati enters the room dressed casually in blue jeans and a polo shirt, humbly sporting his H.Moser & Cie Funky Blue timepiece, it’s clear he falls well and truly into the latter category. Here, the collector, who works in civil aviation, lets us in on his love affair with watches. When did your fascination with watches begin? Exceptional watches and the lifestyle they stand for was certainly ingrained into me by my great grandfather on my mother’s side. I used to spend the whole summer at my grandparents’ home when I was a child, and every afternoon I’d observe my grandfather waking up and opening his safe where he kept precious stones and his favourite watches. I used to watch him cleaning those pieces and winding them delicately every day. What was the first piece you purchased? I got my first watch when I was in fourth grade at age 11, after I had attained good marks at school. I had some money saved, so my aunt and I went to a store in Deira, which sold brands like Cartier, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior. I remember wanting this Yves Saint Laurent watch, so I bought it, but what happened later was rather comical. I came home, obviously happy, but my mother wasn’t pleased with my choice, so she took me back to the shop, added some extra money and that was how I got my first Cartier Tank. What do you look for when sourcing watches for your collection? I got my last timepiece in Paris – a 10-piece limited design. I unknowingly bought the last piece in the world and, believe it or not, they told me that out of all the pieces from this model, mine had an unusual colour. I buy watches according to my taste and how adaptable they are to my everyday life. I look out for special details like the colour of the dial – blue is my favourite – and rare movements from brands like F. P. Journe and Patek Philippe. What is the rarest piece in your collection? I can’t really term one of them my rarest piece; I prefer to say pieces I love, which is funny because I love them so much that I don’t actually wear them very often. One is definitely my Patek Philippe ref. 5235G, and the others are my recently purchased H.Moser & Cie Funky Blue, my F. P. Journe Chronomètre Bleu and my Ulysse Nardin Freak.
Do you have any favourite complications? I like the jumping hour, retrograde and watches with big power reserves that last for one week. I am not a fan of the tourbillon; there’s no particular reason why – it’s just not my style.
What’s your take on smartwatches? Even if you drive a hybrid car, you still love to hear the mechanical sound of the engine, and it’s the same thing with watches. The reality is, there isn’t any investment value in digital watches. Normal watches are different because research and development go into them. There is research on the movement, the type of casing and metal used and its material; you have people who work with rose gold, yellow gold, and some brands even use honey gold. The last watch I bought was red gold.
How do you source your watches? I’m very good friends with the watch dealers Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons and they treat me very well – they always make sure specific pieces are available for me. I never travel especially to buy a watch, but if I happen to be travelling, I search for sellers or small boutiques that have rare pieces and I sometimes chat to other collectors from the area so I’m ready before I get there.
What’s your advice for investing in watches? Three brands that tend to hold weight in terms of money today are Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet. Although, if you’re looking to enter the big league as a collector you need to invest in brands like Vacheron Constantin and H.Moser & Cie. It’s all a matter of taste really – once upon a time I liked big watches, now I like classic watches with simpler details. Your taste will change with age.
Do your timepieces inspire your style? No. First I dress, and then I pick up the watch. I’m usually in kandora by day and jeans in the evening, so before I buy the watch I have a vision of exactly what look it will go with.
The Making of
Freida In the realm of activism, Freida Pinto’s voice has perhaps been one of the strongest in recent years. The Indian actress discusses how fashion has influenced her sense of self, as well as gender inequality and her illustrious career thus far.
c eleb r i t y
Words by Annie Darling
F
reida Pinto is one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood. Between starring in the upcoming IndoAmerican film Love Sonia and working tirelessly as Plan International’s Girls’ Rights Ambassador, the Bollywood model also helps run the We Do It Together initiative, which empowers female filmmakers. At the time of interview, Pinto was preparing to film with CNN for the International Day of the Girl. She has since appeared in the one-hour documentary, alongside American First Lady Michelle Obama and Meryl Streep, which is about young women who overcome incredible challenges to achieve an education and change their own lives. Pinto describes herself as “one of the many voices” that speak up for women’s rights and she regularly promotes international gender parity. “It’s a shocking truth that 66 million girls are out of or denied basic education, which is a stepping-stone to empowerment and independence.” She continues, “Some of these girls I have met firsthand, and I’ve seen no difference between them and girls who have had the privilege of a good
education. Their ambitions, smarts, drive and passion to reach the stars are the same but what divides them painfully is the lack of opportunities, as well as old and sometimes cruel beliefs, mindsets and archaic societal structures that are not based in any logic.” Born and raised in a simmering suburb of Mumbai, the 32-year-old actress enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing. The daughter of a school principal, Pinto somewhat begrudgingly decided to study English Literature at St Xavier’s College, despite desperately wanting to break into acting. On reflection, she jovially attributes her subsequent success to this schooling. “I wanted to make sure that I was using my education and my confidence effectively,” she says of her decision to support women’s rights groups. “I have had a very wholesome education and I know what a big role it has played in my life in empowering me and giving me a standing in this world.” Be that as it may, it’s not always been plain-sailing for the international icon. Pinto understands firsthand that success isn’t a straight line to the top. It’s important, she insists, “to recognise the ‘peaks and valleys’ of the entertainment
work field. To look at the lows as an incredibly important time to create more opportunities that you otherwise would not have looked at during those peak moments.” Unable to secure work as an actress, a 21-year-old Pinto signed to Elite Model Management India after graduating from university. She modelled for twoand-a-half years before accepting a job presenting Full Circle, a television travel show aimed at Indian expats. She’s come a long way since then and has earned herself a sterling reputation as a serious actress, having starred in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Trishna and Knight of Cups. Her career as a cover girl has also taken off – she’s posed for the likes of Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue India, GQ and Elle Magazine. It’s been challenging at times because of her “anxious” personality, which she describes as “very charged”.
With Slumdog Millionaire came the incredible opportunity to say ‘yes’ to the projects I really wanted to be part of.
Perhaps it’s this atypical temperament, as well as her earnest interests, that influence Pinto’s choice of characters, which she describes as “anything complex”. “I think that as human beings, we are all so unique in our complexities and being able to represent that in the female characters I choose can be a very empowering process.” Pinto – who divides her time between Mumbai and Los Angeles – features in the upcoming film Love Sonia, an antitrafficking drama that tells the heartfelt story of a young Indian village girl who gets entrapped in the vicious global sex trafficking industry. Based on real events, Demi Moore and Mark Duplass have also joined the star-studded cast, under the directorial debut of Tabrez Noorani, whose line producing credits include Life of Pi and Zero Dark Thirty. She will also play Mowgli’s adoptive mother in the live-action adventure
adaption of The Jungle Book, based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling. Scheduled for an October 2018 release, Warner Bros’ version of the childhood classic also features Benedict Cumberbatch, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett. She’s “excited” about both projects, revealing that each character is “flawed” and “courageous”, as well as a risk taker. It’s the intricacy of such roles that attracted Pinto to acting in the first place. “The characters I am most drawn towards are characters with resolve, whether she’s a heroine or a villainess,” she explains. While discussing new projects, Pinto does, on occasion, feel the need to reaffirm how grateful she is to Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Against the odds, and nearly six months of auditions, Boyle eventually plucked her from obscurity. Having never previously acted in a film, Pinto instantly
Pinto fulfilling her duties as an Audemars Piguet brand ambassador
became recognised internationally for her performance as Latika, an orphan from a Mumbai slum. The modest production became a surprise hit at the Oscars in 2006, proving that European and American audiences could be receptive to non-Western narratives. “It’s a rare thing to happen in a newcomer’s life, but a blessing that I’m ever so grateful for,” she gushes. “With Slumdog Millionaire came the incredible opportunity to say ‘yes’ to the projects I really wanted to be part of.” These ventures are often ambitious and emotionally demanding. “Life without challenges is quite boring. I like giving myself a little scare at times by taking on ventures that may seem too hard to
conquer,” she concedes with a small smile. “But I do believe that collaboration is key so I always take on challenges knowing exactly who I would like to work with in executing all my crazy ideas.” Pinto is surprisingly grounded for someone who has endured such intense, and often uninvited, publicity. After Slumdog Millionaire’s release, there came a growing interest from the media in Pinto’s private life, spearheaded by the news that she had ended her relationship with her fiancé of five years to start a romance with co-star Dev Patel; a six-year relationship ensued and eventually ended in December 2014. Yet her cheerful confidence makes it seem as if she has been in the limelight all her
life, possibly because of her fierce commitment to each role – she decided to live with a family in east Jerusalem for eight days to prepare for Miral, a 2010 biographical political film about an orphaned Palestinian girl. When she’s not on set or researching a character, Pinto’s most likely getting acupuncture, meditating on a yoga mat, or trying out Hollywood’s steakhouses in her ongoing search for “the best bone marrow”. Additionally, Pinto proudly works as an ambassador for Audemars Piguet, a watch brand she
believes epitomises “exquisite quality and elegance”. Her favourite piece is the vintage Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar. This weighty creation is from the Nineties and combines yellow gold with the most classic complication in all of watchmaking – a “timeless timepiece”, she jests, perfect for a “strong independent woman who is not shy about taking on challenges”. Of course, Pinto’s appeal to men doesn’t need explaining – her eye-catching natural beauty and easy elegance is
inescapable – but she also appeals mightily to young women. She’s inspirational, unpretentious and goaloriented, having gone on to become a certified member of Hollywood’s A-list elite. She’s a fashion icon, too – a regular on best-dressed lists and fashion week front rows. Pinto explains that her self-assured style “is an extension of my own personality”. Distressed jeans and oversized boyfriend shirts are her firm favourites, and although she doesn’t follow the latest trends, she loves to support upand-coming designers. When asked to sum up her own look, she replies, “Anything that doesn’t make breathing and walking clumsy and impossible.” Although a strong believer in fate, Pinto has undoubtedly worked tirelessly to assemble her already illustrious acting career. “Building a strong resume was my priority and I can say that I am proud of what my team and I have been able to achieve in the last seven to eight years.” Her arduous, albeit sudden, rise to fame has highlighted inherent societal obstacles that she’s valiantly overcome and later challenged on behalf of those less fortunate. The proud actress is a bright beacon for Indian actors; she has succeeded without having to compromise by changing her looks or the way she speaks. Furthermore, her galvanising work on the state of gender equality around the globe has touched lives worldwide. Humble, thankful and modest: Pinto may believe that our lives have already been written before us, but when one looks back over her career, she’s sensibly left nothing to chance. She’s certainly kept us riveted both on and off the silver screen, and assuredly has much more to offer.
Man of honour
Words by Peter Iantorno
Carl Brashear beat the odds to become the first African-American master diver in the US Navy – and now he has a special-edition bronze watch in his name. Carl Brashear was not a man who gave up easily. The son of a Kentucky sharecropper, he overcame poverty, lack of education and the institutional racism that dogged the US armed forces throughout his career, to become the US Navy’s first African-American master diver. Brashear joined the Navy in 1948 at the age of 17 and worked his way from the very bottom – doing chores and preparing meals for the white officers, as most black Navy men of the period were expected to do – to the very top. After 14 years of intensive study alongside his regular Navy day job, Brashear qualified as a first-class diver in 1964, only to have his career tragically cut short when he was involved in an accident during a 1966 salvage mission off the coast of Spain, which saw him rescue his crewmates but have his left leg crushed in the process. Brashear survived the accident and was told by doctors that his leg could be saved, but it would mean years of
treatment and he would never dive again. Unwilling to give up his diving career, Brashear instead opted to have his leg amputated and set about the task of learning to dive again with a prosthesis. After four years of gruelling treatment and tests, Brashear was not only reinstated to the Navy, but he also qualified as a master diver – the highest designation a diver can possibly attain. Brashear, who passed away from heart failure in 2006 aged 75, had his incredible story immortalised in the 2000 film Men of Honour, in which he was played by Cuba Gooding Jr. And in 2016, to mark the 10-year anniversary of his death, Swiss watchmaker Oris decided to release its own commemoration: the Oris Carl Brashear – a limited-edition version of the brand’s Divers Sixty-Five, made in bronze, just as the great man’s diving helmet would have been. For more on the bronze watch trend, turn to page 44.
This image: BELL & ROSS BR Skull Bronze Right: IWC Aquatimer Bronze
T h e
Bronze A g e Stable materials like stainless steel have long proven the benchmark for watchmaking thanks to their strength and longevity. However, increasingly bronze – which is just as strong, but develops over time – is being used. Is the industry ready to embrace a Bronze Age?
industry trend
Words by Josh Sims
A
gainst the coldness of steel, bronze is warm and lustrous. And it lacks the connotations of gold - suggestive as that metal inevitably is of wealth, or of special occasions. So it is perhaps of some surprise that watchmakers have been so reluctant to use it. At least until now. Indeed, in recent years, bronze has undergone a trial by many brands - suitable for a limited edition if not a full scale production watch. The reasons for this hesitation? Bronze ages. It changes through oxidisation. What you see is not what you get. “I have to say that we underestimated the appeal of that, but we found that it’s something collectors really seem to like,” says Christian Selmoni, head of design at IWC and the man who pushed through the company’s Aquatimer Chronograph Edition Expedition Charles Darwin - the first time that IWC has used bronze, which might be saying something for a material that has found widespread use for 5,000 years. “Bronze, of course, develops its own patina [it typically gets reddish and darker with age]. As such a watch in bronze becomes personal, a reflection of what the wearer does and where he wears it. It gives the watch an individual look.” Obviously, that can be a hard sell to some people: if watches are a form of jewellery, it
is tough to separate them from that deeply acculturated association with gleam and sparkle. Dullness is, applying the stereotype, suggestive of poor quality. Bronze is, literally and figuratively, the antithesis of flash. “There is a fear of the fact that bronze is a living material,” as Zenith’s CEO Aldo Magada explains of the Pilot Type 20 Extra Special Bronze - a piece that positively exemplifies a secondary reason why watch designers may have for so long dodged bronze: once used, it is hard to prevent a watch from looking vintage, even faux vintage. “It’s for this reason that we haven’t made so many pieces. Bronze has some way to go before it’s accepted by the mainstream.” As Selmoni notes, there are some people who, when returning their IWC for servicing, insist that every dint and scratch on the case is left exactly where it is - because each dint and scratch is, to the owner, part of that watch’s story, and so part of his own. But these are few and far between - most take the full polish, thank-you-very-much. They want it back as good as new, not as interesting as old. So why the tentative embracing of a material which butts against this thinking? Certainly IWC is not alone. Recent years have seen watches in bronze from the more left field likes of Anonimo Firenze, with its Aeronauta and
URWERK UR-105 T-Rex
Marlin models, both of which have been bestsellers for the company; from Alain Silberstein and Hublot with its Bullet Bang - marrying well with both companies’ reputations for experimentation; from Cuervo Y Sobrinos, with its Horas del Mundo piece; from Bell & Ross with its BR01 Skull Bronze; Schofield with its Beater in bronze... Could it be that bronze actually resonates with a more advanced consumer mind-set: one that appreciates a patina (which, on a watch, can easily be polished off) as symbolic less of decrepitude and more of the longevity feasible only with something that was high quality to begin with? A patina, after all, is often preferable in, for example, wooden and metallic furniture, in leather jackets and shoes (clothing, of course, having its own complete philosophy of artfully pre-aged goods, from worn denim to foxed shirt collars). “I think ageing is becoming a much more accepted mark of quality - and it’s certainly an indicator of a luxury product that it ages well,” argues Selmoni. “That’s increasingly part of what makes a product special now. The well-aged is a cultural trend that chimes with a growing interest with mechanical products, with hand-made ones, with local ones, too - it’s part of the counter trend to the digital age of shiny, clean, anonymous, generic products. That said, I think bronze will remain just a small part of the watch world - it is still regarded as a specialist material.” The great watch designer Gerald Genta first proposed a watch in bronze - the Gefica Safari - way back in 1988, of course, though perhaps it was a comment on its predicted commerciality then that, until 2007 when the model was re-
ZENITH Pilot Type 20 Extra Special Bronze
Bronze is a very special metal. It was, after all, the first metal humans were able to use
GERALD GENTA Gefica Safari
issued, it was only available to his friends. He selected bronze because he wanted the watch to wear on a safari trip to East Africa - unlike steel, bronze is a poor reflector of light, thus not giving the hunter’s presence away to his prey. Indeed, there are, in fact, many further functional reasons for using bronze. Consider in detail what bronze is. It’s mostly copper, mixed with a secondary metal, typically tin or aluminium, the latter making what is specifically referred to as alumunium bronze. This is cheaper - for the simple reason that aluminium is more readily available than tin - but is still very strong. Both varieties, however, share particular qualities: both are hard - though not quite as hard as steel, they are nonetheless stronger and more plastic (making them easier to work with, and imbue with fine detail). They are also anti-magnetic. They are also marine-grade alloys, which is to say they can be used in salt water, indefinitely, with almost no signs of corrosion. This is why, by one account, all diver’s watches should by rights be made out of bronze. And many of the watches that have used the alloy have been to this end: IWC’s aforementioned Aquatimer in bronze, for example, and Panerai in its Luminor Submersible 1950 Automatic Bronzo. Oris has released its limited edition Carl Brashear watch, a version of the Diver 65.
Carl Brashear – who is he? One of the unsung action heroes - even if his life story was told in Men of Honor, a movie with Robert de Niro and Cuba Gooding Jnr - Brashear was the US Navy’s first African American master diver. He overcame discrimination - and, one imagines, a fear of dying - to graduate from one of the world’s toughest diving programmes in 1954. And he was real hero stuff: in 1966 he lost the lower part of his left leg in an accident during a mission to salvage a hydrogen bomb, only to rejoin the service as its first amputee diver. Look to the equipment worn by deep-sea divers of Brashear’s era and, from helmet to weight belt to glove seals, there is a lot of bronze, or, more specifically, bronze’s close, more malleable relative brass (an alloy of copper and zinc). For the same reasoning, in an era before stainless steel, many historic ship’s instruments - from compasses to telescopes, bells to portholes - tended to be made out of brass, as was scientific apparatus. Brass was a standard material for pocket watch cases, too. Consequently the use of brass and bronze in watches today touches on that steampunk, retro-futuristic aesthetic that values the technology of bygone (and especially Victorian) eras. “We kept looking back at the inspiring use of the metal among divers like Brashear - especially
SCHOFIELD Beater Bronze
ORIS Carl Brashear
CUERVO Y SOBRINOS Horas del Muno
those amazing copper helmets,” explains Ricco Steiner, Oris’s European region manager. “Other brands have explored bronze, too, and with good reason - the material is distinctive and it is quite stable, if not as stable as steel. Oris certainly won’t be the last brand getting on the bronze train - the twist on the alloy’s use for cases and bezels is more than a fashion.” Certainly the use of bronze need not necessarily be regarded as some kind of nod to the past. Maybe if a watchmaker is going to use such an atypical material, he might as well do so with some abandon. Take, for example, one of Urwerk’s latest models, the UR-105 T-Rex. The avant-garde watch - in shape as in display - sees its high-tech dial almost entirely covered by a bronze carapace that has been laser-etched into a series of tactile edges akin to what a dinosaur’s skin might be presumed to have felt like. It undergoes bead-blasting, micro-sandblasting and deliberate oxidisation to get the dark shade achieved. This patina will develop further - which suggests perhaps the most poetic of reasons to use bronze in a watch: the way the very material itself reacts to oxygen, temperature, friction and humidity is in itself a record of passing time. “We love the contrast - it gives the watch design a certain tension,” says Martin Frei, Urwerk’s chief designer and co-founder. “But more than that, bronze is for me just a very special metal. It was, after all, the first metal humans were able to use and was for a long time considered precious. It’s not an element but an alloy, so it speaks of human creativity and sophisticated trade over huge distances. It’s the metal of the arts. It looks ancient. Bronze is mythic. It’s alive.”
D E SI G N E R INT E R V I E W
Man Behind The
Watch Face Having worked with more than 60 different brands, Eric Giroud is one of the most influential watch designers alive today. Here, he speaks exclusively to MOJEH about his history, inspirations and why he’d never join a company full-time.
Words by Peter Iantorno
F
or a man entrusted with designing watches for more than 60 brands around the world, Eric Giroud is, by his own admission, not much of a watch wearer. “I don’t actually own very many watches,” the 52-year-old Swiss designer, who works with some of the biggest names in the watchmaking industry as well as numerous luxury brands, tells MOJEH in our exclusive interview. “I do own quite a lot of jackets, though. I’m completely addicted to clothes!” It’s far from the ordinary opening gambit one would expect to hear from a watch designer at the launch of his latest timepiece, but then again, when it comes to this particular watch designer, it is always best to expect the unexpected.
The winner of numerous awards, Giroud is one of the hottest properties in horology, having designed for the likes of Vacheron Constantin, MB&F, Boucheron, Harry Winston and Van Cleef & Arpels to name just a few. With such an enviable client list, one might assume that Giroud was always destined to become the bona fide watch industry superdesigner he is today. Yet, while he was born in the right country for it (Switzerland, naturally), Giroud’s path to the pinnacle of watch design was far from a straight one. “My first love was music,” he says. “I remember when I was around 16 years old, I loved the music of The Police, and it inspired me to play music of my own. I wanted to write
music for movies and I stuck with it for a few years until I was around 20; the problem was, I soon discovered that I wasn’t a great musician.” After giving up on music, Giroud moved into architecture, carving out a promising career that saw him open his own studio in 1989, only to be forced to close two years later due to the financial crisis that followed the Gulf War. “I was left with nothing, so I went to Africa for a year and a half to reflect on my life and what was important to me,” he recalls. “I decided my career was important and being back in Europe was important, so I needed to find a way to do that.” On his return from Africa, Giroud found a job in product design working on everything from furniture and
MB&F HM8
lighting arrangements to mobile phones, before, one day, he was tasked with designing a watch. “Everyone in the office was unsure of exactly what to do with the watch, but I found it very interesting,” says Giroud. “The brand liked what I did, and it all started from there really.” Nowadays, Giroud finds himself in the enviable position of being able to take his pick of which of the world’s elite brands he fancies working for – and it’s a position he has no intention of giving up. “I would never do that!” He exclaims when we enquire whether he’d ever be interested in doing what doubtless any number of brands would love, and committing to work in-house for a single company. “I don’t like that way of working. I don’t like to
work in an office. I’ve been working for 25 years by myself. It can get lonely, but I know it’s not very easy to work with me all the time so I like to have the time away. “This is the way it works for me. I love working with different companies; it’s my own kind of network. I still enjoy working as part of a team, but I just like to work as part of lots of different teams and for different goals. That is my pleasure. Some people have different friends for different activities, and what I do is kind of like that.” Clearly, Giroud is a man who has to wear many hats in his line of work, and the particular one he’s wearing at the time of our interview just so happens to be one of his favourites, as he’s in Dubai to launch his latest
timepiece for progressive watchmaker MB&F, the HM8. Shortened from its full title (the Horological Machine No.8 ‘Can-Am’), the HM8 is actually the 10th piece (including variants) to come out of MB&F’s Horological Machines series. The HM collection translates the childhood memories of company founder Maximilian Büsser into incredibly sophisticated modern mechanical timepieces. For the HM8, Büsser takes his inspiration from the now-defunct Canadian-American Challenge Cup racing series, which would have celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2016. The watch features the same distinctive angular form, optical prism displays and nowsignature ‘battle-axe’ winding rotor
that is seen on many of the other Horological Machines, and infuses them with a turbo-charged dose of Can-Am-style racecar design. In the words of Büsser himself, the HM8 is “one of the coolest” pieces ever created by the brand. It’s clear from the passion with which he speaks of the brand that although Giroud is steadfast in his decision to never allow himself to be tied down to a single company, he has a special place in his heart – and his schedule – reserved for MB&F. “I hate the serious part of watchmaking,” he says. “At the end we all have to be serious, but I love working with MB&F because even though we are serious about the high quality of the design, materials, mechanics and finishing, we always have fun along the way. At the start people told us that it was a joke: ‘It’s not possible to build this brand,’ they said, ‘this is a toy’. But after 11 years, people are starting to take us a bit more seriously. We share a curiosity – this is the key thing.” And it’s this curiosity that has seen Giroud design each and every one of the Horological Machines for MB&F, from the groundbreaking HM1 that started it all, to the organiclooking HM6, and everything else in between. While the concepts for all of these pieces are very specific and the design brief given to Giroud will, no doubt, have come with very detailed parameters, the area where Giroud has excelled for so many years is finding that little touch of magic to really make a design work. But where does he find his inspiration? “It’s very difficult to know where I find my inspiration because that depends on the project,” he says. “Each project I do has different brands, different styles of watch, different people and different prices. The first thing for me is to understand the project; after that, inspiration can come from anywhere. Sometimes it comes from the history of the brand, or sometimes it can come from somewhere completely unexpected. Maybe I’ll be out walking the dogs and suddenly – wham! – I’ve got it! It could be a cool car, a detail on a pair of shoes, something I read in a book… who knows.” While his inspiration can come from anywhere, one aspect of his work that Giroud has always been comfortable with is in applying his architectural knowhow to the art of watch design. “It definitely helps me in designing watches,” he says of
his time working as an architect. “I spent 10 years working in architecture and that means I always have that reference and can apply it to watches. For example, most people design the watch from the front, but I start with a cross-section, just like in architecture. A watch isn’t flat – it is three-dimensional and I believe it should be designed to fill the space.” Our interview takes place in Dubai’s MB&F M.A.D Gallery surrounded by millions of dirhams-worth of incredible horology and art, which begs the question: surely Giroud must be tempted to put less effort into designing a sub-AED 1,000 piece for, say, Swarovski than he does for an AED 300,000-plus piece like the
MB&F HM3 Starcruiser
MB&F HM6
HM8 for MB&F? “For me, there’s no difference,” he says, diplomatically. “The first step is always understanding what the project is – in fact, it’s usually harder to design a cheaper watch! The real difference comes in after I’ve done my work, on the materials, manufacturing and finishing – that is what makes a watch more expensive. I take pleasure from designing any watch, no matter the price.” And that is the thing that really shines through when speaking to Giroud: the man simply loves designing watches. He doesn’t care whether it’s a cheap mass-produced item for a massive company or one of the most ornate and luxurious timepieces on the planet – for him, a love of design conquers all.
A Time For
Change As watchmakers woo women with increasingly grand dials and complex designs, we examine the female forces driving a change in the industry.
T
he world of watches, like cars and boats, has typically been characterised as a male domain. Indeed, the most memorable timepieces to populate horological history have clasped the high-profile wrists of male personalities from fiction’s James Bond to the prolific collector Steve McQueen. Cartier’s Tank watch was named after a wartime weapon, Buzz Aldrin’s iconic Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch journeyed into space on the wrist of a male astronaut, while Rolex built its marketing strategy upon the male practice of hero worship and tapped into a sense of adventure with expeditions to Mount Everest and the depths of the ocean forming the foundations of its collections. And today Rolex’s Oyster Perpetual Day-Date is known as ‘The President’s Watch’ thanks to its high levels of technical accuracy that called out to politicians and dignitaries alike.
For women, performance and mechanism have previously been an afterthought with ornate, jewelled designs taking precedence over functionality. In comparison to other industries that have fronted gender fluidity in the 21st Century, horology appears to have lagged. If we look at fashion, for example, we can see how, in 1966, Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic Le Smoking tuxedo was said to liberate fashionable women, allowing them to dress in clothes that were previously the domain of upper-class men. Watchmaking has, however, been less progressive. The likes of Cartier designed secret dial timepieces as recently as 1925 – the hidden watch face a reflection of the society’s belief that women did not need to tell the time. “Women tend to purchase based on brand and aesthetic appeal, whereas men will enter the store and ask which watch will hold or gain value,” says
U NIS E X W ATC H E S
Tariq Malik, owner of Momentum classic and vintage timepiece specialist store in Dubai. Like art, gold and real estate, watch collections that spawn from stores like Malik’s can be referred to as financial investments, although this pastime has also been marked out as a gentleman’s game. It makes sense if you consider the volume and variety of watches available for men versus women. But times are changing. Richard Mille named 2014 the ‘Year of the Woman’, while in October 2016, Omega hosted a special event to celebrate 100 years of women’s watchmaking. Recent years have also seen an increase in the number of female watch collectors as well as trends for women wearing watches designed for men. “Rolex 36mm Submariner, Daytona and DayDate are the most popular among our female clientele,” admits Malik. As with many trends, Malik - whose wife recently requested a Submariner
Images courtesy of CHANEL Watches, Cartier and Momentum Dubai
Words by Laura Beaney
Première Boy Watch, Première Collection, CHANEL Watches
The Rolex DateJust in 36mm transitions effortlessly between the masculine and feminine
like the one worn by Emily Thorne in Revenge – believes that our watchbuying habits link closely to celebrity culture. Rudolph Valentino famously insisted upon wearing his Cartier Tank during the filming of The Son of the Sheik, while today Cara Delevingne is the face of Tag Heuer. Female influencers like Jennifer Aniston and Victoria Beckham are regularly photographed wearing large men’s timepieces by Rolex, while Angelina Jolie opts for androgynous styles like Chanel’s Boy.Friend. “Aesthetically, larger watch faces are more flattering for a female’s slight wrist,” Malik notes. “If women are buying an expensive watch they often want it to be noticeable.” Women’s watches on the whole have
experienced a shake-up. In terms of design, we have experienced a mechanical renaissance, with brands like Jaeger-LeCoultre and Christophe Claret offering women tech-heavy timepieces with complications like chronographs, calendars and moon phase indicators. Aside from aesthetics and trends there is also an emotional attachment between a timepiece and its owner that cannot be ignored. “If a man inherits a lady’s watch, chances are he won’t wear it,” muses Malik. “But interestingly [for women] the reverse is true. Our female clients come in with a Sixties Omega Seamaster belonging to their father or grandfather and they want to wear it. They bring it to the workshop to
be repaired and reworked, often with new straps to customise it to suit their style.” And this postmodern practice of reclaiming masculine styles has also borne an impact on trends. Isabel Marant released a watch with a leather band and gold face inspired by her own heirloom, an antique watch passed down by her father. Nowadays Valentino’s treasured Tank is just as likely to be worn by female stars of stage and screen, while big brands are turning to female celebrities to endorse their watches. What this all points to is that women’s tastes have changed and brands are taking note. The women of today are looking for more than a pretty watch face - they want power and poise behind their product.
watches without Borders Exquisite masculine timepieces perfect for female wrists.
Cartier Tank
Rolex Datejust
Chanel Boy.Friend
The 1917 Tank takes its name from the iconic First World War machine and was worn and designed by the master jeweller, himself. The Tank’s square Art Deco style with rounded corners famously revolutionised the shape of watches to come, and today its appeal to both genders endures. Simple and elegant, Andy Warhol supposedly neglected to wind his Tank remarking that he only wore it for aesthetic reasons. But the Tank’s androgynous aesthetic has ensured its appeal across genders and generations has sustained. An ideal hand-me-down, the late Princess Diana’s Tank was a gift from her father and has since become a treasured possession for her eldest son, Prince William.
Holding a hallowed place in horological history, 1945 saw the launch of Datejust – the first wristwatch to offer an automatically changing date on the dial. Still widely referred to as one of Rolex’s most popular models among both males and females, the Datejust has transcended into pop culture status, popularised, in part, by cinema with films like American Psycho and Pretty Woman costuming the timepiece to reflect the high social status of the wearer. Today, driving the trend for females adopting male timepieces, the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Victoria Beckham and Eva Longoria are known wearers of Rolex watches, designed for men but reclaimed by women.
Pared back but powerful, the statement is in its simplicity. When Chanel released the now-iconic J12 in 2000, the sleek and sporty model spoke to both genders. Sixteen years later, the Boy.Friend is designed for females, but takes a turn back to the masculine directions at the core of the fashion house. Shying away from typical feminine sentiments in not only the name, the Boy.Friend takes a clean cut, refined, and somewhat austere form. Alligator or tweed straps signal the fashion vocabulary of the storied house, while the polished octagonal face shape moves towards masculinity – a nod towards Coco Chanel’s penchant for playing with gender codes.
The wat c h y ea r
Words by Peter Iantorno
A Man’s
World It’s been quite a year for men’s watchmaking. Here are a few of our favourite timepieces of 2016, from moonphase indicators to stunning open-worked skeletons.
Sailing British watchmaker Bremont’s Regatta OTUSA celebrates the brand’s partnership with both the America’s Cup and Oracle Team USA. A proper racing watch, it comes with a regatta-timing complication, a dual countdown display a 15-minute timer and a 12-hour totaliser. Also linked with the America’s Cup, Ulysee Nardin’s Classico Schooner America depicts the gaff schooner, America, sailing to glory for the New York Yacht Club in the inaugural competition in 1851. BREMONT Regatta OTUSA | ULYSSE NARDIN Classico Schooner America
Moonphase A new addition for 2016 to A. Lange & Söhne’s classic Saxonia line, the Saxonia Moon Phase combines three of the brand’s great strengths – clean dial layout, precise moonphase indicators and outsize date display – to make up a superb entry-level option. Meanwhile, the Omega’s Speedmaster Moonphase takes the craft to whole new levels of precision, with a disc so detailed that, if you look closely enough, you’ll actually see Buzz Aldrin’s footprint at the spot on the Sea of Tranquillity where the Eagle lander touched down. A. LANGE & SÖHNE Saxonia Moonphase | OMEGA Speedmaster Moonphase Co-Axial Chronometer Chronograph
Skeleton Replacing the outgoing RM 011, the RM 11-03 represents a new generation for Richard Mille, as it is powered by an all-new RMAC3 calibre with updated technical systems and a whole host of important functions including a flyback chronograph. After the success of the Crash last year, Cartier brought back the model in 2016 in a new metal, releasing 67 pieces in pink gold. The final run of the open-worked Crash, it looks even richer in its new pink gold livery with blued steel hands. RICHARD MILLE RM 11-03 Automatic Flyback Chronograph | CARTIER Crash Skeleton
Travelling For those always on the move, Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas World Time displays a full 37 different time zones, even including those that are offset by only a half or quarter hour. The Bovet Récital 18 Shooting Star is also a world timer, but it goes about the task in a rather more roundabout way, using a specially commissioned hemispherical map of the world and a rolling list of 24 time zones with corresponding cities, which can be displayed using the watch’s crown. VACHERON CONSTANTIN Overseas World Time | BOVET Récital 18 Shooting Star
J EWEL in the
C ROWN When high jewellery and haute horology combine, the result is often nothing short of stunning. Here are some of the most dazzling jewel-encrusted timepieces of the year.
Words by Dmitri Ruwan
7 Day Power Reserve Skeleton, FRANCK MULLER
T H E W ATC H Y E A R
Cartier Dragon MystÊrieux Cartier’s latest exceptional timepiece is in a league of its own. Not only does the dragon carry a 23.77-carat fire opal set amid its diamond-encrusted horns, but it also boasts emerald-set eyes and a Cartier signature mystery movement, which creates the illusion that the hands are floating.
Chopard Imperiale Joaillerie 581 baguette-cut sapphires totaling 47.98 carats covering the entire colour spectrum are carefully set into the dial, case and bracelet of this dazzling watch. The timepiece also has a 60-hour power reserve, while its crown and lug covers are adorned with amethysts.
Chanel Première Flying Tourbillon In classic Chanel style, the flying tourbillon mechanism is stylised with the house’s signature Camellia in white gold set with glittering diamonds. The watches come in 18-karat white or beige gold, while each numbered edition is also set with baguette cut diamonds around the dial and a diamond-paved case.
Dior Grand Soir Kaléidiorscope No.3 by Dior VIII Taking inspiration from Christian Dior’s intricate fabric embroideries, the latest Grand Soir collection offers a kaleidoscopic look into haute horology. This piece features an onyx dial set with brilliant-cut diamonds and gold lacquered cabochons, mother-of-pearl set with marquise-cut sapphires and purple sapphires, and opal set with triangle-cut diamonds.
Mouawad Grande Ellipse Lady The simplistic beauty of Mouawad’s Grand Ellipse is a treasure for modern minimalists. This delicately fashioned 18-karat rose gold watch is water resistant and contains a sapphire seethrough back, while it comes with an impressive 42-hour power reserve.
Franck Muller 7-Day Power Reserve Skeleton The mechanical movement for the timepiece has been designed and decorated entirely in house, while the bridges are hand-chamfered – a timeconsuming haute horology technique. This piece comes in with the brand’s signature Cintrée Curvex casing or the round case pictured.
Piaget Altiplano Decorated with 396 brilliant-cut diamonds, the Altiplano is powered by Piaget’s signature 534P self-winding mechanical movement. And that’s not all: even the case is made out of 18-karat white gold and lavished with with 88 brilliant-cut diamonds.
Montblanc Bohème Exo-Tourbillon Produced to celebrate the brand’s 110th anniversary and easily distinguishable by its blue lacquer snake motif with ruby mounted eyes – a potent symbol of life and rebirth – and multi-layer dial, this exclusive timepiece is limited to just 10 pieces.
bu s i n e s s
PLA Y ER
P wer With watch companies increasingly turning to celebrity endorsements to ensure maximum visibility, brand ambassadors are becoming crucial marketing tools. Is the industry getting value for money? MOJEH investigates.
Words by Peter Iantorno
W
hat do eight of the top 10 highest-paid sportsmen in 2016 have in common? They are all currently – or have been in the past – affiliated with watch brands. From footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (number one on the list, and current TAG Heuer brand ambassador), to tennis players Roger Federer (Rolex) and Novak Djokovic (Seiko), golfers Phil Mickleson and Jordan Spieth (both Rolex), basketball legend Kobe Bryant (Hublot) and former Audemars Piguet brand ambassadors Lionel Messi and LeBron James, the world’s top sports stars are making a killing from the watch industry. And it’s not just sportspeople either. With everyone from actors and artists, to musicians and models also getting in on the act – starring in the brands’ ad campaigns, making public appearances at events and even having special-edition timepieces created in their honour – celebrities are becoming increasingly important to the marketing strategy of the biggest watch brands.
But are the brands getting value for money? One company that knows more than most about celebrity endorsements and big-money partnerships is TAG Heuer. Having recently signed a major partnership deal with the English Premier League to have its logo appear on the fourth officials’ electronic boards, and boasting a roster of celebrity brand ambassadors that includes the likes of footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Mats Hummels, actors Chris Hemsworth and Cara Delevingne, and DJs Martin Garrix and David Guetta, the company isn’t shy in splashing its marketing budget to get exposure on the biggest stage and association with the biggest names. According to Jean-Claude Bivver, the company’s CEO and president of LVMH Watch Division, getting the right partnerships can prove invaluable – even if the initial outlay is a big one. “I believe there is an impact on our brand image and sales,” says Bivver in an exclusive interview with MOJEH. “We have to talk in a language that is understood by the
new generation. You have to adapt your communication and message to the customer. That’s the reason why we have chosen stars like Garrix, Delevingne, Guetta and Ronaldo as spokespeople, because they speak to this young generation and have credibility among them. For Bivver, it’s essential that TAG’s brand ambassadors fit the right profile. “We share the same values, and the same success,” he continues. “Once you share all these elements it is easy to benefit from each other. Whatever we do together, both parties benefit; it is a typical ‘win-win’ marriage. It gives our customers the conviction and assurance that they have bought the right brand – a brand that belongs to their world, their dreams, their emotions and their search for excellence.” As well as the headline-grabbing Premier League deal, TAG is also a partner to the German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga, MLS in the United States, the Chinese League, the Asian
Both Floyd Mayweather and Usain Bolt, below, have big-money deals with Hublot
Football Confederation and many more. Although, unsurprisingly, most brands (and ambassadors) are reluctant to divulge exact details when it comes to finances, clearly, such major global exposure must come at a price. However, Bivver seems more than happy that he is getting plenty of bang for his buck. “I believe there is a big impact,” he says. “It is difficult to say [how much of an impact] since every year is different, but currently TAG Heuer participates in approximately two events a week worldwide. Today our average price is still the same as before,
but in quantities we sell much more. July 2016 was our all-time best July in terms of sales since the company began in 1860… This is historic.” Of course, along with the massive exposure a high-profile brand ambassador can provide, there’s also the potential flipside of a badly behaved ambassador being caught up in a scandal and dragging the brand’s name through the mud. As Bivver mentions, brands pick ambassadors to represent them because they identify with the company and share the same values, so when a celebrity is disgraced for any
reason, a failure to act quickly could spell a PR nightmare. It’s a fate that almost befell TAG back in 2009, when then company poster boy Tiger Woods became embroiled in his now-infamous infidelity scandal. After initially releasing a statement declaring that the golfer’s personal life was “not our business”, the company later made the decision to drop Woods, fearing the media backlash if they were to stick with their man. While Bivver was not CEO at the time of the scandal, he is very clear about how he would deal with similar issues if they were ever to arise again. “Lying is unacceptable,” he says, “and TAG Heuer do not wish to be associated with negative stories.” And it’s not just the potential for scandal that a company needs to be wary of when picking a brand ambassador. According to Maurice Hamilton, global CEO at The SMC Group, a procurement agency that specialises in matching brands with talent, there are a whole range of factors to consider – and a poor choice of partnership could be extremely costly for a company in more ways than simply financial. “It is vital to select an individual who genuinely likes and supports the brand, not someone who is there just to make a quick buck,” he says. “The key messages he or she communicates should be sincere and consistent; as a result, the
3 Watches inspired by brand ambassadors
TAG Heuer Formula 1 42mm Chronograph Ronaldo Special Edition This striking green and black number from TAG Heuer was created to honour perhaps the company’s most high-profile brand ambassador and includes the distinctive CR7 logo at the three o’clock position on the face.
Cara Delevingne is one of TAG Heuer’s many brand ambassadors
relationship between the brand and ambassador will be perceived as much more natural by consumers. “Another important factor to note is the other brands the ambassador may be associated with,” Hamilton continues. “While choosing an ambassador, companies should avoid hiring someone who has already endorsed several brands. Customers are likely to get confused and as a result blur brand image and reduce effectiveness of the association. A famous face doesn’t mean they fit with any given brand.” We don’t have to look too far into history to find a high-profile example of mismatched brands affiliated to the same sportsman. In 2015 Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao squared off in a mega-money bout dubbed ‘Fight of the Century’, which saw Mayweather take on three main sponsors – each of which paid an estimated $1 million (AED 3.67 million) to the world champion. Hublot (also part of the LVMH group) took the prime advertising spot, with a large brand logo displayed on Mayweather’s waistband, but instead of being joined by companies of a similar standing, the luxury Swiss watchmaker was positioned alongside fantasy sports website FanDuel (whose logo was
displayed on the bottom of his left trunk-leg) and – even more jarringly – fast food giant, Burger King, which sent its mascot, ‘the Burger King’ on the ring walk with Mayweather. Hardly great matches for a company that once sold a timepiece for $5 million. It’s not the first time Mayweather has mixed his sponsors either; back in 2009 he signed a $3 million shoe deal with Reebok, only to later spend thousands of dollars in his local Nike store and share the whole episode on social media, leading to him being axed by the brand. They don’t call him Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather for nothing. Yet, while the big-money world of celebrity endorsements and sponsorships is littered with potential pitfalls, the message – from Mr Bivver, at least – is that, irrespective of the money spent, the key to a successful partnership is picking the right person for the brand. “We partner with iconic teams, great organisations, and people who share similar values and a strong vision,” he says. “Most of the time, we pick our ambassadors after we have already seen them wearing our watches. In my eyes, it is essential that we have a real commitment; the human relation is at least as important as the business relation.”
Hublot Big Bang Unico Usain Bolt Created to mark the Jamaican sprinter’s historic attempt at the ‘triple triple’ – which he went on to achieve at the Rio Olympic Games – the Big Bang Unico Usain Bolt comes in yellow gold and the ceramic black version pictured.
Richard Mille RM 35-02 Rafael Nadal The latest product of a six-year partnership between Richard Mille and the Spanish tennis player, the RM 35-02 Rafael Nadal is the first piece in the collection to feature an automatic calibre.
B REAKING
B ARRIER S Founded just six years ago, Belgian watch company Ressence is still very much in its infancy. However, propelled by the unique designdriven approach of founder Benoit Mintiens, the watchmaking minnow is already making waves.
Words by Josh Sims
wat c hmake r f o c u s
Facing page: Type 5, below: Type 3, both RESSENCE
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here are few in the watch industry who will profess to not knowing much about watches. Benoit Mintiens is one of them. “I’m not a watch freak,” he says, almost confessionally. “I know less about watches than most people and like most people I recognise that there’s no real reason to care about watches either - we have the time on our phones. But I’m still interested in watches as a designer.” That’s what Mintiens is. The founder of the watch company Ressence has for most of his working life been a product designer. He’s designed strollers for Maxicosi and vacuum cleaners for LG, conceived trains for SNCF, created packaging for candy, petrol stations for Total, even shotguns for Browning. What the process - and a visit to Baselworld, the watch industry’s monolithic trade show - taught him was that, as he puts it, most watches
are little more than tedious repetitions of what has gone before. “Many watch companies just sell on social status now - the fact is that a watch is a kind of avatar, one that represents you. It’s a kind of business card, an extrapolation of the personality you want to express,” he argues. “That means it’s not really about the products themselves anymore. That means these companies make a lot of money, which is cleverer than me. But it also means their watches are typically boring and, from a product designer’s point of view, pretty poor. The big brands don’t do anything new. They haven’t for decades. You wonder if they have all these fancy booths at Baselworld because their products aren’t very interesting…” Perhaps only someone not-Swiss could say such a thing. Mintiens is Belgian, so feels no sense of protection towards the
Swiss industry, and even more so given his necessarily having to stress how his watches are Swiss-made to get sales in some quarters. “Mature markets might not care where Ressence is from, but it matters to, say, customers in the Middle East. In fact, I can’t really say it’s a Belgian watch even in Switzerland; I have to emphasise that it’s made there.” While Ressence can’t lay claim to offering much in the way of big-brand social status - “hardly anyone has heard of us,” Mintiens suggests - it can boast a new vision of how a watch might work. His breakthrough, Swiss-made Type 1 watch - yours for a not inconsiderable €17,000 (AED 70,100), and the Type 3 and 5 models that have followed introduced a number of pioneering ideas: most notably the time display via a series of concentric discs, moving around each other, aptly, like moons around a planet.
Dubbed ROCS - the Ressence Orbital Convex System - this isn’t the only thing to make the watches stand apart. They have also re-calibrated watch aesthetics. They are curvy, pebble-like pieces with a dial and glass that makes them something akin to the horological equivalent of big plasma screens - all the better for legibility, expressing the time being Mintiens’s prime mover. It is a notion Mintiens takes to the max too: the dial is single rather than multi-layered, because that is easier to read; it is extended out to the very edge of the watch to maximise its surface area, because that is easier to read; it is fixed as close to the crystal as possible, because that is easier to read; and, with the Type 3 at least, the space between dial and glass is oil-filled to prevent the refraction of light and so minimise the human eye’s depth perception because, yes, that is easier to read. This invites some ingenious problem solving of its own: since oil contracts and expands according to fluctuations in temperature, the watch is fitted with a number of tiny bellows that similarly expand or contract in response, ensuring that the glass remains entirely and precisely full of oil, thus maintaining that legibility. “Most watchmakers start with the movement and build around it,” Mintiens explains, “while industrial designers start from the user experience. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel - using hands to read the time isn’t a great way from the designer’s perspective. After all, it’s a system you have to be taught. And it’s just a product of someone trying to find a way to display the time from the mechanism that had been created. But it’s also a very intuitive way - once you know how. If I’d have gone so far as to re-think the display Ressence would be even more marginalised. Being so far from what people know would be so niche as to no longer be commercial. That said, there probably is a better, more intuitive way of displaying the time.” No doubt Mintiens is working on it. It is as though, given his training - one, arguably, sorely missing from the watch industry at large - he can’t help but look at an object and try to see ways of making it better. He speaks of the lessons - in usability, in economy, in messaging - learned while designing what he calls “very unsexy” products the likes of fire extinguishers (“a product most people have never used, but which one they have to pick up and be able to use righty away, and in
a panic too”) or labelling machines. “Design is about optimising a process, giving a return on investment for the client. They have a labelling machine that costs so much, takes up so much room, uses so much energy, can do this but not that, and they want an improvement on that. That’s what good design is about,” Mintiens argues. The end result also has to look good “even a labelling machine needs to look professional” - though not at a cost to functionality. Style without substance is anathema to Mintiens, so it says much that Ressence watches are, to those who snap up the 300 or so made each year (with Ressence refusing to stay afloat by producing endless novelties), so damn good-looking: modern without being sci-fi, timeless without being dusty. “An engineer doesn’t consider the aesthetics, and an artist may come up with a visionary idea but not know if it can be implemented. Product designers are somehow in the middle,” Mintiens says. “But certainly they’re concerned with how something looks - because
Design is about optimising a process, giving a return on investment for the client
that is primarily how anyone relates to a product. Your relationship to that product is through the way it looks. It’s your way in. It’s the same with people. This is a bit of a cavemanish thing to say, but the fact is that if you have two people saying the same thing, it’s always nicer to listen to the one who’s good-looking. That said, the end function remains key. In using a product in time you forget its looks, much as you see through those of a person eventually.” Mintiens concedes that the launch of Ressence just five years ago was in part the product of good timing. He had gone to Baselworld to check out Urwerk - finding the equally radical watch
company inevitably sidelined in a tent somewhere outside of the main event - and acknowledges the importance of other small independent brands he’d later discover, the likes of MB&F, in paving the way. But he stresses that the culture at large has also been in line with bringing about what he calls the “Uber-isation of watchmaking”: new technologies that allow the production of smaller runs without diminishing quality, and the crucial role of the internet in allowing these relative minnows to reach an audience without the mega-bucks advertising the sharks can afford. “There’s also been a response to the big established brands
RESSENCE Type 1
not having done anything interesting for a long, long time,” Mintiens adds. “People are just getting bored. The independent makers still represent only a tiny fraction of the industry as a whole. I mean, we’re not just peanuts, we’re barely the salt on the peanuts. But people are looking for something new, and the independent makers don’t just work differently, they look different too.” Look to a Ressence watch and there isn’t even the usual crown. The function is still required, but, Mintien’s argues that to have the mechanism for that function protruding from the device makes, on a 21st Century watch, about as much sense as an engine winder would on a modern car. “For me, the crown was the last physical link to the idea that the watch is something mechanical,” he says. “And I want the watch to be dematerialised - to just be the purest expression of time. It’s like vacuum cleaners. There was a time when we wanted them to clean but didn’t care about it much more than that. Now we have guys like James Dyson who came up with a new philosophy for the cleaner, a way of doing that function differently.” Some will regard the rationality of Mintiens’s position - so counter to the high-end watch world’s emphasis on heritage, tradition, craft and classicism - as too unromantic. Indeed, while many watch brands seem to make a sales pitch out of the number of components in a watch the more the better - Mintiens sees this as backward: if he can do more with fewer components, so much the better. Then there are fewer parts to maintain, fewer to go wrong. While other brands still equate quality with physical heft, Ressence aims towards unobtrusiveness, towards lightness the body of its Type 3, for example, is, with the exception of the wheels, made from grade 5 titanium, meaning it weighs just 79 grams, while also protecting the movement from the negative effects of magnetism. Be thankful - for those who mind about such things - that there is a mechanical movement at all. Even
Mintien’s reasoning for retaining a mechanical movement is an intellectual one. “The fact is that people have an empathy for gears and they don’t have empathy for circuits as humans we feel for the mechanical over the digital,” he argues. “It’s why digital devices that don’t work any more go in the garbage, but we don’t do that with anything mechanical we immediately imagine that there’s some little cog that could be made better, like a little animal.” As counterintuitive, even combative, as Mintiens’s position may be to anyone in the more traditional watch industry, there are enough people out there who appreciate his standpoint
to have allowed him to rapidly turn what started out as a personal project - “something to pass by a Sunday afternoon when small children means you can’t leave the house” - into a fulltime job for him. “No,” he corrects himself, “more than a full-time job.” “I tried to carry on designing other products at the same time, but almost had a serious car accident when I fell asleep at the wheel, so decided that either the design agency or Ressence had to go. And I went with keeping Ressence,” he adds. “I do sometimes miss designing other things. But I still get to be creative, to improve something. There’s that in every job, if you look for it - even accountancy.”
Born to fly Despite losing their father to a tragic flying accident, Bremont co-founders Giles and Nick English have never lost their passion for aviation.
Words by Peter Iantorno
inside story
E
very major watch company has an origin story. Most involve a chance meeting between soon-to-be business associates and a moment of inspiration to kick-start a brand that develops over centuries into a watchmaking superpower; so far, so predictable. British watchmaker Bremont, on the other hand, has rather more remarkable beginnings than most – a tale of tragedy, trauma and, ultimately, triumph over adversity. Unlike the majority of industry heavyweights, we don’t have to go back to the 1800s to see where Bremont all began – their origin story starts on March 4, 1995. Brothers, Nick and Giles English, and their father, Euan, were practicing for a synchronised air display flying historic aircraft, when the 1942 WWII Harvard Nick and Euan were flying crashed. Waiting to take off in the next sortie, Giles was informed of the accident. His father had been killed on impact and his brother was in a critical condition, with 30 broken bones. “Life changed for us after that,” Giles tells MOJEH. “When he recovered, Nick and I agreed that life is very short and we wanted to do something we both loved doing, so that’s exactly what we did.” It is the kind of disaster that can easily tear a family apart, but for Giles and Nick, it only served to bring them closer together. Within six months, Nick was back in the air, being flown by Giles, and the pair busied themselves taking over the small family business of restoring vintage aircraft and planning for what they really wanted to do: set up their own watch brand. “Our father was an amazing man, a PHD engineer from Cambridge, talented pilot and an amazing practical hands-on engineer,” says Giles. “He had a workshop where he built planes and he built a boat that we went to live on as kids. One of his passions was also watches and clocks, so Nick and I grew up around watches and clocks and always loved them. We founded Bremont in 2002 and launched our first watches in 2007 after spending five years in development.” While the brothers’ horological knowhow, passion for watchmaking and meticulous eye for detail would ensure that the first Bremont timepieces were fit to mix it with the best in the industry, launching a
fine watchmaking company in the UK – a place hardly renowned for its horological heritage – was always going to present challenges. “For the first five years it was incredibly difficult,” says Giles. “In fact, it still is. Building watches in a country that has not produced watches for many years and building a global brand is not easy. Not to mention, trying to explain to your wife that you have not sold a single watch in the first four-and-a-half years is not an easy conversation to have!” Yet, despite the difficult beginnings, the English brothers persevered and turned the company’s British heritage – seen as a negative in some quarters – into an overwhelming positive. “Britishness is a
BREMONT America’s Cup Regatta
BREMONT Boeing 100
huge point of reference for us,” says Giles. “People forget that there is a wonderful history behind British watchmaking. Our goal has always been to help reinvigorate and restart the industry in Britain and play our part in it. We are incredibly lucky that we have been able to build on this history and tell a story that many people are not aware of.” And the brand’s British heritage isn’t just important from a marketing point of view, as Giles explains: “When we first started out there were around 750 Swiss watchmaking companies and we were one of the only British watch brands. This was a huge differentiator for us; it meant we were able to work with great
British companies such as Martin Baker, Jaguar and the British forces, which has really allowed us to stand out from other brands. The world tells the time by Greenwich Mean Time, not Geneva Mean Time.” Partnerships have been an important facet of the Bremont brand since the start, but perhaps the most intriguing so far came in 2007, when British company Martin Baker, which specialises in manufacturing aviation-related safety equipment such as ejection seats, approached Bremont to produce a watch that would be made available exclusively to pilots who have ejected from a Martin Baker seat. There was just one catch: Martin Baker specified that the watch had to go through the same testing programme as the seats themselves. “This sounded great in theory,” says Giles. “However, in practice it was to be a long road ahead.” After two years of development and rigorous testing to ensure that the watch was fit to stand up to the ejection seat test programme, Bremont finally released the MBI for ejection seat veterans, along with the MBII and MBIII variants that were made available to all. And while the extensive testing process was extremely time-consuming, it helped Bremont make its watches even more robust – something especially important for a company with the tagline, ‘Tested Beyond Endurance’. “The engineering has now been used in many of our designs,” says Giles. Robustness is incredibly important to us. A mechanical watch is inherently quite delicate and aviation watches by the nature of their style are even more prone to damage compared to, say, a diving watch. We wanted to create a beautiful aviation-style watch that you could wear in the boardroom or up Mount Everest. We want our watches to be used.” Another Bremont piece with an impressive backstory is the Wright Flyer. As well as the brand’s first ever proprietary movement – the BWC/01 – the watch also contains a piece of wing cloth from the original Wright Flyer, the world’s first successful powered flying machine, famously piloted by Wilbur and Orville Wright in 1903. “It’s incredible to think that you are wearing a really important part of
history on your wrist,” says Giles of the watch. “It all came about after the work we had been doing on our Victory and Codebreaker watches; we had raised a lot of money for charity and we were approached by Amanda Wright from the Wright Foundation. It was a dream come true for myself and Nick – to hold the original material that was on the first ever aircraft was quite special.” From the MB series to the Wright Flyer, it is clear that the co-founders’ passion for flying forms the very building blocks of their brand. It’s a passion that has cost them dearly with the loss of their father, yet has also given them the drive to keep on pushing the limits
of aviation-inspired watchmaking. The most serious test of Giles’s commitment to flying came in 2013, almost two decades after the tragic accident that killed his father, when he was involved in an accident of his own. While piloting an old 1930s biplane through a turn, the engine suddenly cut out, sending the plane smashing into the ground. Amazingly Giles somehow escaped without serious injuries and went on to make a full recovery - but surely, a second accident would be enough to put him off flying for life? “Not me,” he says defiantly. “But it has put my wife off me flying! I have a lot of work to do on that one…”
BREMONT MBII
Keeping time Heritage technique meets contemporary design as expert horologists craft supreme timepieces to complement the aesthetic of the modern gentleman.
Photographed by Laura Marie Cieplik Styled by Alba Melendo
Sam wears DOLCE&GABBANA | Jeff wears Jacket, SAINT LAURENT | Trousers, ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUTURE | Bow tie, DIOR HOMME | Shoes, LANVIN | Maxime wears ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA | Harold wears DOLCE&GABBANA | Watch, CHOPARD
Jeff wears jacket, bow tie, SAINT LAURENT | Shirt, trousers, ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA | Maxime wears ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA
Watch, ROGER DUBUIS
Harold wears coat, FENDI | Jumper, GIVENCHY | Jérémy wears shirt, FENDI | Coat, BALMAIN
Watch, IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN
Maxime wears jacket, DIOR HOMME | Trousers, jumper, CANALI
Jeff wears jacket, SAINT LAURENT | Trousers, ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUTURE | Bow tie, DIOR HOMME | Watch, PARMIGIANI
Harold wears DOLCE&GABBANA
Watch, PIAGET
Maxime wears jacket, DIOR HOMME | Shirt, CANALI | Trousers, GIORGIO ARMANI | Jeff wears PRADA | Harold wears BRIONI
Maxime wears GIVENCHY | Watch, MONTBLANC
Watch, ROGER DUBUIS
Jérémy wears suit, ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA | Bow tie, DIOR HOMME
Sam wears SALVATORE FERRAGAMO | Shirt, CANALI
Watch, BREMONT
Jérémy wears jacket, LANVIN | Shirt, SALVATORE FERRAGAMO | Trousers, CANALI
Harold and Maxime wear GIVENCHY | Watch, MONTBLANC
Harold wears DOLCE&GABBANA | Watch, CHOPARD
Models: Maxime Findeling and Jeff Hinton at Premium Models Sam Lammar and Harold Vente at Elite Models JĂŠrĂŠmy Andrieux at Marylin Models Creative Director: Kaduri Elyashar Fashion Collaborator: Maki Kimura Hair Stylist: Yumiko Hikage Make-up Artist: Lamia Bernad Production: Louis Agency
Codes of Colour Let your confidence radiate through bold inclusions of colour and stately design. Moss green and crimson red add charm to a refined winter palette while lavish texture becomes the season’s motif.
Photographed by Ziga Mihelcic Styled by Sophie Pasztor
Charms watch in rose gold with fully paved diamonds, Vintage Alhambra earrings in yellow gold with diamonds, Perlée Clovers bracelet in pink gold with diamonds, Perlee pearls bracelet in pink gold, Perlee bracelet in rose gold with fully paved diamonds, Perlée couleurs between the finger ring in pink gold with carnelian and diamonds, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS | top, CHLOÉ
Vintage Alhambra 10-motif necklace, PerlĂŠe ring in yellow gold with diamonds and PerlĂŠe Clover ring in white gold with diamonds, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS | top, MARNI
Bouton d’or pendant that’s transformable into a clip in yellow gold with diamonds, onyx and chrysoprase, Vintage Alhambra earrings in yellow gold with diamonds and Perlée rings in pink gold with diamonds, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS | jacket, CÉLINE
Bouton d’or necklace in yellow gold with diamonds, onyx and chrysoprase, Bouton d’or ring in yellow gold with diamonds, onyx and chrysoprase and perlée earstuds in yellow gold with diamonds, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS | jumper, STELLA MCCARTNEY
Magic Alhambra 3-motif earrings in yellow gold with malachite, Vintage Alhambra 5-motif bracelet in yellow gold with diamonds, PerlĂŠe bracelet in white gold with fully paved diamonds, Perlee pearls bracelet in pink gold, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS | top, CHALAYAN at BySymphony
Model: Valeriia Marchukat at The AgenC Hair and makeup: Annesofie Begtrup
Feathered Fantasy Sumptuous hues cast mesmeric charm over your daywear and reveal fine-tuned, opulent details. Carefully crafted adornments decorate the body with elegance, while delightful botanical designs allure to a whimsical spirit.
Photographed by Julia at Factory ME
From left: Rubelite and white diamond palm ring, Colombian emerald and white diamond palm ring, Double flower onyx palm ring, Carved square emerald ring, DAVID MORRIS
Cut diamond 36mm watch with micro diamond set case in 18 carat white gold with metallic green leather strap and domed glass, DAVID MORRIS
Pink pearl and white diamond necklace with rose and brilliant cut white diamonds set in lotus blossom motifs in 18 carat white gold, DAVID MORRIS
Oval and briolette blue sapphire flower necklace with white diamond round diamonds and white microset diamonds, DAVID MORRIS
Pear shape white diamond Le Jardin flower bracelet with round white diamonds and micro-set surrounds set in 18 carat white gold, DAVID MORRIS
y The Statement Affair
Elevate subdued styling with statement stones and jewellery designs that speak for themselves.
Photographed by Anthony Arquier
Styled by Joana Figueira Dacheville & Jean-Charline Thomlinson at Saint Germain
Earrings, ALEXANDRE REZA
Necklace, CHAUMET | Dress, ALEXANDER VAUTHIER
Ring, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS | Top, HERVE LEGER
Earrings, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS | Top, skirt, PASKAL
Earrings, PIAGET | Coat, PASKAL
Cuff, dress, LOUIS VUITTON
Necklace, earrings, dress, LOUIS VUITTON
Earrings, watch, DIOR FINE JEWELLERY | Dress, CHRISTIAN DIOR
Ear cuff, PIAGET | Blouse, LANVIN
Earrings, ring, CHANEL HIGH JEWELLERY | Sweater, CHANEL
Ring, CHAUMET | Top, NARCISO RODRIGUEZ
Earrings, REPOSSI | Coat, MARIMEKKO
Model: Yulia Terenti at Oui Management Make up: Mayumi Oda at Callisté Hair: Rimi Ura Nails: Hanaë Goumri Production: Louis Agency
Necklace, ALEXANDRE REZA | Top, ALYX
Set in stone The timeless elegance of the season’s high jewellery sparkles against ancient relics of times gone by.
Photographed by Laura Marie Cieplik Styled by Alba Melendo
Brooch, SYLVIE CORBELIN
Cuff, secret watch, watch, CHANEL HIGH JEWELLERY
Ear cuff, ring, REPOSSI
Ear cuff, SYLVIE CORBELIN
Watch, CHOPARD
Necklace, ring, CHOPARD
Ring, SYLVIE CORBELIN
Secret watch, CHANEL HIGH JEWELLERY
Creative Director: KADURI ELYASHAR Fashion Collaborator: MAKI KIMURA Production: LOUIS AGENCY
Bracelet, earring, necklace, BUCCELLATI
Storied
As precious stones continue to command our attention and drive jewellery trends, we explore the historical significance and lore of coloured gems.
Words by Laura Beaney
GEMOLOGY
Main image Winter’s Palace, MOJEH Issue 23 Photographed by AMBER GRAY. Images courtesy of CHANEL, Getty and Van Cleef & Arpels.
StoNES
A story shrouded in myth and superstition the Les Talismans de Chanel high jewellery collection refers to Gabrielle’s penchant for symbols of charm and protection
K
agem and Montepuez stream vivid green and rich red stones to suppliers each day. The Gemfields mines, based in Zambia and Mozambique, cater to the soaring demand for precious, coloured stones that have seen the prices of emeralds and rubies growing at an exceptional pace. Coloured stones in general are experiencing a renaissance. From the sapphire engagement ring that once belonged to Princess Diana and is worn today by the Duchess of Windsor, to the opulent emerald necklace designed by Van Cleef & Arpels for the Maharani of Baroda, our connection to colour has deeper roots than a trend in time. Indeed, jewellery is arguably the most personal of collectable items, with pieces often individually commissioned to the taste of the owner. And, when passed down or resold, that piece relays the story of its creator. “These stones were hidden for 500 million years,” says Ian Harebottle, Gemfields CEO. “If you’re the first one to touch that stone it does something to you. The energy sits there once the stone has been cut and manufactured, and the way the woman wears the stone is completely different to the way she would wear her watch or a pair of shoes.” For millennia, stones have played a part in our spirituality in its various guises,
from crystal healing to talismans. This connection was recently realised in high jewelley medium, with the Les Talismans de Chanel collection referring to Coco Chanel’s famously heightened sense of superstition. Known to draw inspiration from Eastern mysticism, the founder of the French fashion house surrounded herself with talismans and symbols of good luck that later fed through into her designs. While high-profile royals like Princess Mary drove mainstream trends for coloured stones after she was recorded wearing an emerald engagement ring during the Twenties, bad press and negative connotations can equally affect the popularity of precious stones for the wrong reasons. The Sutherland necklace, for example, bears a heavy burden. Belonging to the Countess of Sutherland, the piece was made up of 33 pearls that had formerly belonged to the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. When the necklace went up for auction in 2007, it was valued at almost AED 3 million, but to great surprise, it failed to meet the reserve. Perhaps the no-sale is a testament to the enduring sense of power and superstition we afford to gemstones, indeed in many cultures both opals and pearls are said to bring bad luck when purchased second-hand.
But who decides that opals are unlucky and that blue sapphires are fit for royalty? The meaning of a certain stone can change greatly according to geography, theology, culture and time. “Gemstones were often attributed healing powers because of the symbolism of their colour, not because of any chemical constituent,” says Richard Liddicoat of the Gemological Institute of America. “For example, red or reddish stones, such as the ruby, spinel, garnet, carnelian and bloodstone were thought to be sovereign remedies for all types of haemorrhages.” The colour of heat and blood, the power of the ruby has typically lent itself to passionate activities. In religion, Hindus credited rubies with their personal safety, while culturally, many Indians believed that the stone allowed them to live in peace with their enemies. “In the south of India, a marriage is incomplete without a ruby,” notes Harebottle. “While in the Ming dynasty, rubies played a very important role, they were taken into battle for protection,” he continues. With the belief that rubies made their warriors invincible in battle, the Burmese like the Chinese were prolific collectors of the red stones. The rubies hailing from Burmese mines are still today benchmarked as the most expensive and rare in the world. Burma’s King Thibaw owned a
The Sutherland necklace is the culmination of 33 of Marie Antoinette’s pearls set with diamonds and rubies. It was auctioned at Christie’s London in 2007
particularly substantial collection of the stones, while the 25-carat Burmese Sunrise ruby is the most expensive in the world, recently selling for an incredible AED 110 million at auction. Today, the stone’s legacy continues to be celebrated. Catering to the increased demand for information surrounding gemstones, their origins and history, earlier this year, Gemfields released a triptych of films detailing ruby inspired stories, tapping into the mysticism and legend surrounding the stones rather than just the aesthetic. “Rubies have been renowned for their magical properties
since the beginning of civilisation… we wanted to explore how these beautiful and mysterious gemstones resonate with women today,” says Harebottle. While rubies conjure fire, emeralds are said to soothe the soul. “Emeralds are generally recognised as the first reported luxury good known to man: this goes back to the Incas and Aztecs,” says Harebottle. “The people realised that when it rained, the fields were green and life was good,” he continues. Associated with calm, spring and rebirth, the colour green is prevalent in both African culture and Islam. Thailand is
home to the sacred emerald Buddha, which is in fact made from jade, while the lapidaries of the First Century were said to use emeralds to restore damaged eyesight. Attesting to the supposed medicinal benefits of the green stone, in 1609, Belgian physician Anselmus de Boodt claimed that emeralds could cure a plethora of aliments from dysentery to epilepsy. And from Cleopatra to the Empress of Iran, the world’s most revered rulers were documented wearing emeralds. The stones are said to signal protection against evil and for many they are a symbol of both enlightenment and
high social status in equal measure. “Since the beginning, the Maison has taken the time to search the world for exceptional emeralds,” says Alessandro Maffi, managing director at Van Cleef & Arpels, Middle East and India. Twenty times as scarce as diamonds, these rare stones were carved with verses of the Quran by the Emperors of the Moghul period, while Shah Jahan, creator of the Taj Mahal, had emeralds inscribed with sacred text that he wore as protection. In a rich cultural exchange during the 1900s, high jewellery maisons like Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels were commissioned to create custom pieces for India’s dignitaries. Exposed to the new and opulent traditions of India, the country’s influence is palpable in the high jewellery collections that followed and found favour with the European elite - Cartier’s 1936 Hindu necklace commissioned by socialite Daily Fellows is one such standout piece. Historically, jewellers have set emeralds in yellow gold – a pure metal thought to enhance the radiance of the stone – yet in Emeraude en Majeste, a collection created to celebrate Van Cleef & Arpels’ enduring affection for the stone, emeralds are set among diamonds and sapphires in white gold. Mined in Colombia, Brazil and Zambia, the stones are scarce and today’s elevated market prices further fuel our fixation with the mysterious emerald. Transcending cultures, religions and traditions, the stories surrounding our stones are vast and varied. While many of the merits we assign to our stones have been borrowed from legend or folklore, the conversation surrounding gemology remains as rife today as it was when the Burmese first discovered their ruby mines. Discovered by an Indian tailor in 1967 the Tanzanian tanzanite, which
The Indian emerald necklace was a special order for H.H. Prince Aga Khan, 1971
is associated with communication, became the latest addition to the list of birthstones, updated in 2002. “Birthstones have long been identified with healing powers and talismans,” says Liddicoat. “The list has evolved over centuries and many variations of it have been used.” Throughout history the bounds of birthstone definition have altered with birth month, zodiac sign and even the time of day of birth, acting as deciding factors when it comes to assigning stones. Although the tradition has been prevalent since the First Century many today afford
significant emotional attachment to their appointed birthstones. Whether selecting a simple stone tied with string for protection or commissioning an elaborate piece like that of a Maharaja, the selection of any gemstone carries a greater importance than simply considering a colour to match our mood. From the realms of tradition and folktales to the skilled maisons creating custom designs for dignitaries at Place Vendome, our choice in precious stones has the ability to communicate complex messages and install power and prowess into the owner.
Millennial Links
AQUILANO RIMONDI
s t y le n o t e
As men’s versions have taken a turn for more avant-garde shapes, look to androgynous minimalism for a subtle yet powerful statement on womanhood today. From the brushed jet metal of an AK47 on Fonderie 47s links to the Tahitian mother-of-pearl setting on Longmire’s set. It’s no longer a man’s world. 1. Carbon fibre racing cufflinks, CHOPARD | 2. 14-carat white gold and blackened AK47 steel, FONDERIE 47 | 3. 18-carat white gold set with 290 brilliant-cut natural black diamonds of 5.77 carats, JACOB & CO | 4. Stainless steel with black PVD finish and brushed steel inlay, MONTBLANC | 5. Black PVD stainless steel, CHARRIOL | 6. 18-carat white and yellow gold with round white diamonds, FABERGÉ
DOLCE&GABBANA
Imperial Cuffs
Elevate your aesthetic with a touch of the opulence so prevalent in men’s cufflinks for the season ahead. No longer are these sharp additions to your favourite suit meant to fit a standardised work place. Individualism is the name of the game. Channel royalty in a series of regal seals, icy diamonds and polished gold. 1.18-carat yellow gold cufflinks with 623 natural ruby and brilliant-cut diamonds, JACOB & CO | 2. 18-carat pink gold pyramid décor cufflinks, CARTIER | 3. Tahitian mother of pearl with reeded edge in 18-carat rose gold, LONGMIRE | 4. Stainless steel cufflinks with yellow gold-coloured PVD finish and Tudor rose made of precious red resin, MONTBLANC | 5. Celtic rose PVD stainless steel cufflinks in rose gold, Charriol | 6. White diamond cufflinks set in 18-carat rose and white gold, FABERGÉ
From the
h e a rt With an unbridled passion for her craft and an insatiable appetite for success, Salama Khalfan is one of the brightest stars in jewellery design.
Interview by Dmitri Ruwan
T H E D E SI G N E R
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alama Khalfan was always destined to be a jewellery designer. Founder of high-end jewellery brand Alezan, the Dubai-based designer has a passion for art, horses and, above all, jewellery. Here, she lets us in on her motivations, sources of inspiration and why you should never, ever turn down an opportunity. What led you to jewellery design? I always loved gold. Even as a five-yearold child, whenever my father would ask me what I wanted, I never asked for toys – I would ask for gold! I’ve always liked jewellery; I’ve always noticed it on women and somehow, it always brings glamour to any occasion. I wear jewellery in the morning, at night and I even go to sleep wearing it. It makes me happy. Were you always destined to get into the industry? I’m someone who believes that everything is possible. This belief has enabled me to do whatever I wanted. My father was an inspiration to me growing up, and he inspired me to pursue my education and be determined about it, to take a leadership role within myself and within my surrounding environment. After I finished my education I joined a financial organisation and focused on strategy – it’s something I enjoy very much and it keeps the mind switched on. But success in my professional life meant less time for my art, and after a couple of difficult losses and experiences, I realised that I would have to honour the truth of my soul. This comes with understanding the things you did naturally as a child – things that were never taught to you. Art was one of them, and it was very important in leading me to design. What challenges did you face starting your own brand? The challenge was mostly from within. I had thoughts; I was overwhelmed with all of the things I would have to do. It’s human nature to envision obstacles and the more detailed your thoughts become, the more frightened you get. I remember I had this book called Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite. It was a tiny book – the
kind you finish in 30 minutes – but it said, “Build the techniques as you go,” and that just resonated within me as a statement. I realised that I didn’t have to see the whole staircase to the top, I just needed to see one or two steps and I would not be frightened of accomplishing my goal. Where do you get your inspiration? There’s always a source of inspiration, and every collection has its own story. For example, the Luck At First Sight collection, which resembles horseshoes made with high-quality diamonds, is inspired by the common
understanding of cross cultures, religions and languages between people. Everyone somehow associates horseshoes with good luck and it doesn’t matter where you come from. I’ve travelled the world and wherever you go, people smile when they see a horseshoe; it’s a common language that brings people together. Travel also serves as a great form of inspiration. Equestrian symbolism is evident in much of your work. What’s the connection? I’m a show jumper; it’s my passion from deep within. Another reason is that I
There’s always a source of inspiration and every collection has its own story
worried that once the business grew, I wouldn’t have enough fire and drive to deliver consistently and periodically. This is why I chose to design jewellery that is inspired by horses – a subject I’m so passionate about that I could never run out of creativity with it. How did you deal with the production aspect of creating your jewellery? When it came to deciding where I would produce the jewellery, I was in Paris and I was looking for artisans who would produce it by hand. I found that in Europe, artisans are becoming very rare, as everything is being replaced by technology. These artisans are also traditionally older and there are very few of them, which also means they take a very long time to deliver. So, I then went to Florence, the capital of gold in Italy, only to find that the situation is pretty much the same there – while there are more artisans in Florence, they would still take nine to 10 months for a single piece, which is a no-go for this part of the world, because we’re used to things happening instantly. I then came back to Dubai and started this immense search for goldsmiths who created Arabic and Indian jewellery, because they still possessed the older techniques of making jewellery and they’ve never been exposed to technology. Do you have any favourite pieces from your collections? That’s like asking a mother who her favourite child is! But, in terms of my designs, two pillars are modularity and technicality – something that can be worn in multiple ways because they have been designed for the modern woman. I also love items that have technical details such as a tiny element that moves; it needn’t be noticeable to anyone else, but a private connection between the jewellery and the wearer gives a piece dimension. Our jewellery isn’t conventional. The people at the workshop sometimes ask me why we can’t just pour the gold into a single mould instead of creating five separate gold grains to fix into a single piece, and I tell them that it isn’t the same – it has to have that intricacy and that sense of rarity.
What do you do when you aren’t designing jewellery? Everything. I’m obsessed with sports; I ride my horses, do yoga and Pilates. I also love to cook, travel and paint. What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given? Never say no to opportunity – never. What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career so far? When a young designer comes to me and says “I would love to do what you did, how did you do it?” Just knowing
that somehow you were able to inspire someone makes a difference. What are your plans for Alezan going forward? [Laughs] That means I would have to share my five-year strategy with you! But, to expand regionally and internationally is a natural desire. As far as future projects are concerned, we’ve decided to collaborate with a renowned store in Dubai, S*uce Rocks, for the first time, and we’re also working on something fantastic for the upcoming collection.
ALEXANDER MCQUEEN
s t y le n o t e
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4 Coloured
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Art Deco Each year the high jewellery collections display a signature colour code, but this time around the hues are subtler, though no less vibrant. Swathe your wrists in the art deco details of carved rock crystal, contrasted against platinum settings and black enamel lined in gold for a show stopping entrance.
1. 66 fancy, buff top cut emeralds, 5.48 carat rubies, sapphires, amethysts and 16 diamonds, BVLGARI | 2. BOUCHERON | 3. 502 brilliant-cut diamonds, 4 pear and cushion-cut sapphires and 8 pear-shaped diamonds, PIAGET | 4. Emerald and black enamel ring, GEMFIELDS | 5. Large 31.6 carat DIF emerald, calibrĂŠ-cut diamonds, carved rock crystal, CARTIER | 6. 22.4 carat tourmaline, amethysts, sapphires and diamonds set in white and yellow gold, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS
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CHANEL
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3 E x c e p t i o na l
Pearls Let these classic stones entrance you as they appear across a variety of designs that borrow from the past to create something wholly new. Where pearls were once considered forgotten heirlooms their modern day counterparts complement all hours of the day with newfound luminesce and enigmatic details. Truly standing the test of time.
1. 126 Akoya pearls and 18.59 sparkling diamonds, YOKO LONDON | 2. White gold, spherical and pear-shaped diamonds, sapphires, one white cultured pearl, one cushion-cut tourmaline of 15.73 carats, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS | 3. White gold, pearls, blue sapphires, amethysts and diamonds, CARRERA Y CARRERA | 4. South sea pearl in baroque style, YOKO LONDON | 5. 4.11 carat white diamonds and 18 carat white gold ring, NOA
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We offer a complementary professional jewellery repair service performed on our premises by our skilled goldsmith, or, if the client prefers, we collect the pieces from their home, repair and return – free of charge, of course. We often custom design pieces based on ideas our clients have for themselves or for a special gift for a loved one. I take so much joy from working directly with my clients. It is a real pleasure to see a person cherish a one-of-a-kind piece that I have designed especially for them.
Diamond in the ROUGH Established in 2009, Iranian jewellery brand Alaghband is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the rising stars of the industry. We caught up with the man at the top, Mohammad Ali Alaghband, to find out what makes this brand so special.
We are an Iranian brand that pays a lot of attention to our rich culture. We have a very creative team, from the jewellery designer and industrial designer, to the graphic designer and even a historian, who studies Iranian art and culture in order to help us produce our original and traditional Iranian designs. The services we provide to our clientele are very exclusive. When clients come to our boutique we always make sure to give them space to browse and choose the pieces they like. Our clients are intelligent and know what they want; we never force our ideas, therefore whatever piece our clients buy, they always love and enjoy it, because it is their own choice.
THE CEO
What makes us different from other Iranian brands is that we work on everything from high-end unique concepts and classic pieces with precious stones, to more casual pieces for the everyday wearer with very reasonable prices. This means we have clients of all ages and from all backgrounds with one thing is common: they love jewellery and they love luxury. Competition isn’t important to us. I never believed in competition and never thought to compete with any other more established brands in Iran or anywhere else. I always think about what our clients would like to see from us and focus on providing that. The jewellery business in Iran – and in most other places – is mainly made up of companies that have been passed down from generation to generation. Because of this, as well as other economic and political issues, the industry is still driven by tradition, which you can see clearly in everything from our designs and handcraftsmanship, to customer service. Alaghband maintains these essential aspects of the business but also breaks from tradition – that is what sets us apart. The most important thing for me is to see my clients happy. We focus on building long-term relationships, so first and foremost we want our clients to be pleased with the pieces they have purchased and the service they have received; only after does the financial interest come in. In the near future, with new and unique designs taken from our Iranian art and culture, we hope to introduce our brand to the world. There has never been a 100 per cent Iranian luxury brand perform to international standards on every level, and we hope to be the first.
The most important thing for me is to see my clients happy. We focus on building longterm relationships
A
YEAR IN
JEWELS The High Jewellery stars of the year that was.
T H E J E W E L L E RY Y E A R
Louis Vuitton Blossom For its Blossom High Jewellery collection, Louis Vuitton has reinvented the iconic four-petalled Monogram Flower, putting it centre stage on no fewer than seven spectacular necklaces as well as 60 new rings, bracelets and sets of earrings. The one constant at the heart of every design is a gemstone: from the flamboyant mandarin shade of the distinctive garnet, to the mysterious black opal with its kaleidoscopic reflections, each and every piece is special. Necklace, ring, white gold, mandarin garnets, onyx, diamonds | earrings, white gold, spessartite garnets, onyx, diamonds, LOUIS VUITTON BLOSSOM
Cartier Magicien From diamonds and emeralds, to rubellites, beryls and blue or green sapphires, Cartier has left no stone unturned in creating its spectacular Magicien collection. The Quetzal set, pictured, takes its inspiration from a mythical Aztec creature: the sacred feathered serpent, with glowing sugarloaf rubellites at the centre of black lacquered platinum accentuating the serpentine natures of the pieces. Necklace, bracelet, white gold, rubellites, diamonds, CARTIER MAGICIEN QUETZAL
De Grisogono Folies One of only four contemporary jewellers to display at the 28th Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris, De Grisogono is again at the forefront when it comes to groundbreaking styles, disruptive ideas and iconic designs. The brainchild of the brand’s founder and creative director Fawaz Gruosi, Folies combines the sparkle of top-grade diamonds with the vivid and assertive colours of rubies, emeralds and black diamonds Earrings, white gold, titanium, white diamonds, black diamonds | ring, pink gold, white diamonds, rubies | ring, white gold, white diamonds, emeralds, DE GRISOGONO FOLIES
BULGARI Serpenti Much as the name suggests, the new Serpenti collection from Bulgari focuses on the piercing stare of a snake. Inspired by the classic Bulgari serpents of the Sixties and Seventies, the new collection makes magnificent use of the hexagonal scale pattern and utilises precious gemstones and sparkling diamonds to give life to the snake’s bejewelled face.
Necklace, bracelet, earrings, white gold, diamonds, emeralds BVLGARI SERPENTI HIGH JEWELLERY
Giampiero Bodino Tesori Del Mare Part of Giampiero Bodino’s new collection exhibited at Paris’ newly renovated Ritz Hotel during Fall 2016 Haute Couture, Tesori Del Mare – much as you may expect from the name – takes a heavy inspiration from the Italian designer’s love of the sea. The star of the show has to be this transformable jewel, which is made from blue sapphires, white gold and diamonds, and can be used as either a necklace or earrings. Transformable jewel, blue sapphires, diamonds, white gold | ring, emerald, diamonds, white gold, GIAMPIERO BODINO TESORI DEL MARE
Dior À Versailles Inspired by the iconic Château de Versailles, Victoire de Castallane, the artistic director of Dior Joaillerie, takes her design cues from the various decorative art details within the palace for the brand’s À Versailles collection. While a diamonddrop necklace recalls a crystal tassel from a chandelier in the royal apartments, a bow evokes a piece of detailing on the various examples of Rococo-style furniture that can be found throughout the palace. Rose-cut and briolette diamonds contrast with more modern baguette diamonds, while the oxidised silver used on certain settings lends a sumptuous feeling of depth to the fine jewels.
Ring, pink gold, platinum, darkened silver, diamonds, ruby, DIOR SALON DE MERCURE
Van Cleef & Arpels High Jewellery The latest Van Cleef & Arpels High Jewellery collection is all about one thing: emeralds. In all, the collections contains more than 1,400 carats of the little green beauties, each of which has been specially selected from mines as diverse as ones in Colombia and Zambia, due to their unique character. With white gold, diamonds, sapphires, platinum and pearls also used, each and every piece in the collection is a genuine treasure.
Necklace, white gold, platinum, diamonds, white pearl, emerald | Bracelet, white gold, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS HIGH JEWELLERY
Chanel Les Blés de Chanel Paying homage to Gabrielle Chanel’s fond childhood memories of wheat, Les Blés de Chanel follows the life cycle of the crop through 62 stunning high jewellery pieces. From the Premiers Brins, Brins de Printemps and Brins de Diamants pieces – which evoke the tender young wheat shoots of early spring through the use of diamonds, peridots, crystalline and aquamarines – to the Légende de Blé necklace, which displays a majestic ear of wheat in white gold and diamonds, the whole process is shown in spectacular detail throughout the collection.
Necklace, earrings, white gold, white diamond, CHANEL LÉGENDE DE BLÉ
Piaget Sunny Side of Life For its Sunny Side of Life collection, Piaget looks to the frivolities and festivities that add joy to our everyday lives. Among the 150 pieces in the resplendent collection, this pink gold necklace set with a single oval-cut Paraiba tourmaline from Mozambique, 16 marquise-cut diamonds, eight marquise-cut pink sapphires and six marquise-cut blue tourmalines is a real standout.
Necklace, white gold, Paraiba tourmaline, diamonds, pink sapphires, blue tourmalines, PIAGET SUNNY SIDE OF LIFE
Chopard Red Carpet Collection In celebration of the 69th Cannes Film Festival, Chopard’s 2016 Red Carpet Collection comprises 69 extraordinary creations inspired by the great women of stage and screen. The collection sets the stage for flowing, supple, open-worked designs based on rounded shapes and focusing on the neckline, with rubies, sapphires, diamonds and emeralds starring throughout and a spectacular necklace with matching earrings featuring a plethora of daffodil yellow and white pear- and brilliant-cut diamonds stealing the show. Necklace, earrings, white gold, yellow gold, yellow diamonds, white diamonds, CHOPARD RED CARPET COLLECTION
Mouawad High Jewellery One of the standout houses to show at the 2016 Doha Jewellery & Watch Exhibition, Mouawad yet again shares its outstanding expertise in the field, with its exceptional High Jewellery collection. The brand’s Le Rêve Diamond Suite is a prime example of straightforward, clean design and superb craftsmanship showing the simple beauty of a diamond. Necklace, earrings, ring, white gold, diamonds, MOUAWAD HIGH JEWELLERY LE REVE
FRED LEIGHTON, 1960s Cartier 18-karat gold clip emerald earrings, available @Net-A-Porter
D i g i ta l
D i v e r g e n c e As the popularity of shopping via e-commerce platforms continues to soar, heritage jewellery brands are making their collections available to buy online. Does the future of fine jewellery retail lie online? MOJEH investigates.
Words by Mary Keenan
TA L K IN G P OINT
T
he motives behind buying jewellery are often highly personal and emotionally charged; whether for an engagement, anniversary or special occasion, a lot of thought and consideration comes into play when selecting the right jewels for a special person or for oneself. Additionally, given the nature and cost of fine jewellery, consumers need to be able to ascertain that what they are buying is of exceptional quality and value by having a purchase experience that is interactive, satisfying and reassuring. This may explain why fine jewellery brands have been comparatively slower to jump on the e-commerce bandwagon than other divisions within luxury retail. However, in the last five years more and more storied jewellery brands have either launched their own online stores or have made select pieces from their collections available to buy via e-commerce sites in order to broaden their customer base and increase their brand awareness. This movement has had a direct impact on growth within the global fine jewellery market, with analysis by industry experts indicating that online fine jewellery sales are set to double in the next three years, coming to account for 10 per cent of all luxury jewellery sales. There are a number of factors and demographics driving these figures, “Some of our online customers have purchased instore in the past and choose to take advantage of the convenient, quick and personalised service we offer through our website. Often our online customers are those unable to visit showrooms – either due to their location (we have delivered as far and wide as Japan, Australia, the US, Singapore, Canada and Brazil) or time constraints,” says James Amos, Marketing Director of British high jeweller Boodles. According to Net-A-Porter’s Fine Jewellery Buyer Sophie Quy, a significant amount of the store’s business “comes from women buying fine jewellery for themselves, to wear either every day or for a special occasion. We have a huge fine jewellery base in the Middle East, as well as in the US, Europe and Asia”. E-tailers are going to great measures to bridge the gap between face-to-face and online sales. “We have an incredible customer care team as well as personal shoppers globally who are available 24/7 to answer any queries and guide our customers to the perfect piece. We also have an amazing styling and photography team in-house, so it’s easy for our customers to see exactly what the pieces look like,” says Quy. Amos explains that Boodles has adopted a similar approach. “We launched a transactional website in 2012 to offer our beautiful designs to a wider audience, both in the UK and overseas. Our online team is available almost around the clock to offer advice and help for customers and we always aim to go above and beyond expectations to ensure that the experience is just as memorable as shopping in store.” These implementations are proving to be paying off, particularly for Net-A-Porter whose fine jewellery
Top: YEPREM, 18-karat white gold diamond ring Bottom: REPOSSI, Serti Sur Vide 18-karat rose gold diamond ring, both available @Net-A-Porter
category offerings have grown tenfold since launching in 2012. While physical store locations continue to be the main method of purchase for Boodles’ customers, Amos acknowledges that “e-tailing certainly does play a very important part in the fine jewellery industry and it is growing steadily every year. While some customers will always prefer to visit one of our stores to make a purchase, our website is nonetheless an important research tool which enhances the buying experience”. As the demands of our fast-paced lives continue to increase, will the convenience of interactive technology and dedicated online sales teams cause e-tailing to become the predominant source of fine jewellery retail in the future, or will the desire to experience pieces and conduct transactions in person continue to prevail? Only time can tell.
73 safety deposit boxes were smashed open at London’s Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company in April 2015
Heists o f t h e C EN T UR Y
Wherever there are valuable gemstones, unscrupulous thieves are never far behind. From the Hatton Garden robbers to the infamous School of Turin, here are the most audacious jewellery heists of the century.
Hatton Garden Burglary Where: London, UK When: April 2, 2015 Estimated value: AED 62 million The burglary that took place at London’s Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company late on April 2, 2015 was one of the most audacious of the century, yet you’d be more likely to see the men responsible drawing their pension than committing a crime, with the youngest of the gang aged 49 and the oldest aged an incredible 77.
The burglary took place over the Easter weekend (a public holiday in the UK), and saw the gang spend two days drilling into the vault, before emptying 73 safety deposit boxes of around AED 62 million-worth of gold, diamonds and sapphires. It seemed for a while that the gang had got away clean, but after a lengthy surveillance operation, police caught three of the ringleaders bragging about the crime in a north London pub and arrested all but one of the gang as a result, handing out jail terms varying from six to seven years.
H E ISTS
Graff Diamonds Robbery Where: London, UK When: August 6, 2009 Estimated value: AED 240 million One balmy summer’s evening in London, a pair of well-dressed gentlemen wandered into the Graff Diamonds in the city’s upmarket area of Mayfair. Both perfectly groomed and wearing sharp tailored suits, the gents looked like the normal clientele for the high-end store; however, as soon as they were allowed entry by the store’s security guard, they produced handguns from their pockets, forcing staff to the floor. The men, who had used the services of a professional, made off with an estimated AED 240 million worth of jewels, including rings bracelets, necklaces and watches, switching getaway cars in an attempt to elude local law enforcement. However, unfortunately for them, one of the robbers left a mobile phone in the first getaway car, leading police to track down the men responsible, including two other accomplices. While they were arrested, found guilty and given various prison sentences (up to 23 years for ringleader), the precious jewellery was never found.
Cannes has long been a magnet for thieves looking to cash in on an easy target
Carlton Cannes Snatch Where: Cannes, France When: July 28, 2013 Estimated Value: AED 500 million Thanks to its star-studded annual film festival, which hosts many a diamond-loving celebrity, Cannes has long been a magnet for thieves looking to cash in on an easy target. 2013 was a particularly bad year for the town, with two separate thefts totaling around AED 13 million before the pièce de résistance: an AED 500 million robbery from Israeli billionaire Lev Avnerovich Leviev’s private jewellery collection, which was being displayed at the Carlton InterContinental Hotel. For such a large amount, the heist was incredibly straightforward. The robber simply slipped into a poorly guarded hotel room through an unlocked door, brandished an automatic pistol at the guards and made off with 72 jewels (34 of which have been described as exceptional) in a suitcase. Despite a reward of AED 5 million for information leading to the recovery of the jewels, nothing has been found.
Antwerp Diamond Heist Where: Antwerp, Belgium When: February 16, 2003 Estimated value: AED 367 million Antwerp Diamond Centre is one of the most secure buildings on the planet. Protected by multiple security mechanisms - including a lock with 100 million possible combinations, infrared heat detectors, a seismic sensor, Doppler radar, magnetic field, and a private security force patrolling the perimeter - even a robber as audacious as the fictional Danny Ocean would think twice before attempting a break-in there. However, all that security proved no match for the closest thing to Ocean’s Eleven we have in the real world: the School of Turin gang. After years of planning, a five-man team led by Leonardo Notarbartolo managed to bypass the heavy security and get away with jewels worth an estimated AED 367 million. It was almost the perfect crime, but DNA from a half-eaten sandwich left among the discarded diamond packaging was enough to lead police to Notarbartolo and his accomplices. The gang was jailed, but the diamonds were never recovered.
After years of planning, a five-man team managed to bypass the heavy security and get away with jewels worth an estimated AED 367 million
Schiphol Airport Hold-Up Where: Amsterdam, Netherlands When: February 25, 2005 Estimated value: AED 433 million Some great diamond robberies take years of planning, with every intricacy planned meticulously and absolutely nothing left to chance; some, on the other hand, are incredibly simple yet seriously effective – and the Schihpol Airport heist of February 2005 certainly fits into the latter category. On the morning of the robbery, an armed gang disguised as airport workers broke into a secured area of the airport and flagged down a truck carrying diamonds bound for Antwerp. The gang held up the truck driver at gunpoint, forcing him and other genuine airport staff to lie face-down on the floor while they simply drove away with what police estimated to be AED 433 millionworth of diamonds. Nobody was ever caught for the crime and the investigation remains open.
Millennium Dome Mishap Where: London, UK When: November 7, 2000 Estimated value: AED 1.5 billion Had it been a success, the ram-raid on London’s Millennium Dome (now known as the 02 Arena) would have been the biggest jewel robbery in history, with the target – a De Beers diamond exhibition – containing jewels valued at some AED 1.5 billion, including the world-famous 203.4-carat Millennium Star diamond valued at a whopping AED 450 million on its own. The plan was simple: the gang would use an
excavator to smash into the exhibition, before grabbing the Millennium Star and as many other diamonds as they could carry, then making their escape across the Thames via speedboat. There was one problem with their plan, though: the police had been tipped off and were watching the gang’s every move. So, on the day of the robbery, the gang managed to smash their way into the exhibition, only to find a team of undercover policemen, who promptly arrested them. And the worst part for the gang? After hearing about the possible robbery, the police had swapped the real diamonds for fakes. They never even had a chance.
The Millennium Star diamond is worth a jaw-dropping AED 450 million
Words by Dmitri Ruwan
H
igh jewellery and high fashion often go hand in hand. It is the best of both worlds: A praised union of the most creative minds and unmatchable artistry paired with years of heritage. But, unlike the latter, high jewellery maintains a timelessness not dominated by seasonal trend charts. However, in recent times famed jewellery houses have acknowledged the immense power of social influencers (also known as the red carpet glitterati), as well as the importance of individualism. In a time governed by instant trends and instant shares, many who invest in jewellery seek something brilliantly cut and distinctly unique. And therein lies the task for many jewellers today, perfecting collections that are not only a testament to haute jewellery techniques but also a covetable piece for the modern woman. These women showcase their selections with a lavish flair of style and grace each time they step onto the red carpet – the world’s stage. Here we look to our favourite red carpet pieces.
Charlize Theron Not everyone is capable of making a statement that perfectly combines high jewellery with haute fashion. Yet this conundrum didn’t faze Charlize Theron whose elegantly constructed couture tuxedo by Dior brilliantly offset her diamond Cartier necklace and earrings.
Glamour redefined RED CARPET
Emmy Rossum The intricacy of Fred Leighton’s vintageinspired pieces brought life to Emmy Rossum’s radiant Wes Gordon gown. The Twenties diamond and natural pearl earrings were set in platinum and matched with a thin diamond bracelet that dates back to the elegant Thirties.
Toni Garrn Toni Garrn pulls no punches in a daring Ulyana Sergeenko couture dress. As if her delicately sculpted Boucheron Fleur de Jour necklace and ring in white gold and diamonds weren’t enough of a statement! The star completed her ensemble with a Lierre de Lumière cuff inspired by ivy; the piece also doubles as a timepiece with a hidden watch face amid the white gold and diamond setting.
Bella Hadid Model of the moment Bella Hadid embodies the extravagance of old Hollywood with contemporary flare. Pictured here pairing her embellished Roberto Cavalli gown with a diamond encrusted De Grisogono choker, as well as Florinda bracelet.
Marion Cotillard Appearing in Cannes at the premiere of It’s Only The End Of the World, Marion Cotillard displayed her Parisian sensibilities in a sculpted black dress by Dior. She dazzled thanks to an extraordinary pair of 18-karat white Fairmined gold and diamond earrings from the Green Carpet collection by Chopard.
Gemma Arterton When choosing what best would accent her one-shoulder Philosohpy di Lorenzo Serafini gown, Gemma Arterton opted for a pair of Solena Maya earrings crafted by the Parisian jewellers, Messika. The earrings themselves pay homage to the forgotten Mayan civilisation and are delicately carved from 24 emeralds and pear-cut diamonds, which are offset by six triangular-cut diamonds. Each is reminiscent of feather headdresses worn by powerful forgotten emperors.
Alessandra Ambrosio Glittering in a Zuhair Murad diaphanous gown, this supermodel’s necklace overshadowed all else at the Venice Film Festival. This Bulgari Serpenti necklace boasts a whopping 74.20 carats of pavé diamonds in grey gold.
Lupita Nyong’o The 2016 Met Gala’s theme was man versus machine: a thought-provoking commentary on the rapid growth and influence of technology. But what was equally evident was the unwavering future of jewellers like Tiffany & Co, which adorned Lupita Nyong’o with drop earrings, Victoria cluster bracelets and rings, all of which featured various diamonds that perfectly illuminated her custom Calvin Klein gown.
Lost &
FOUND From Cartier and Bvlgari to Vacheron Constantin, buying back their own iconic collections is big business among many luxury brands. Yet the reasons behind this are as varied as they are fruitful‌
IND U STRY
Richard Burton often bought Elizabeth Taylor, below, lavish gifts, including this diamond necklace and the sapphire and diamond sautoir, right, both by Bvlgari
H
ave you ever wanted to set your eyes upon a piece of fine jewellery once owned by an Indian Maharaja or a Russian Tsar? How about a splendid seven-carat Colombian emerald gifted to Elizabeth Taylor by her love, Richard Burton? Until recently, many maisons had given little thought to the whereabouts of the thousands of their pieces bought over the decades by the great and the good of the world, but nowadays times are changing, and so are buying patterns. And, just how do fine jewellery houses prove status and prowess today? Increasingly, they are investing in, and buying back, their own iconic pieces. While luxury brands and auction houses haven’t always seen eye to eye – there have been many-a tug of war over turf – today the two have become closer than ever due to their shared goal of promoting history, savoir faire and timeless value. From Cartier’s incredible heritage collection – the most iconic in the
business – to Bulgari’s and Boucheron’s private lot, representatives are often seen bidding at auctions, investing in collections and pieces they sold off years ago. Indeed, when we spoke to Brett O’Connor, Senior International Specialist for Sotheby’s, he told us that this practice is “something we do see, but for the most part, bids are made anonymously. The jewellery houses are typically looking for superb examples of their designs which incorporated the wonderful craftsmanship and material for which they are so well-known.” Yet just as the houses are varied, so are the mechanics behind these powerhouse reserves. While most would see it as a moneymaking machine, this is actually just one of many reasons that renowned brands are bringing their designs back home. However, that doesn’t go to say there isn’t a lot of financial gain thanks to newly interested, and high net worth, buyers. “We are definitely seeing an increase in modern collectors acquiring more vintage pieces,” says Michael Friedman, Audemars Piguet historian. “I think it’s an increase of appreciation. Owners of a contemporary piece also looking for its vintage counterpoint which inspired the new style.” The latest Vacheron Constantin boutique in Singapore has also joined Geneva, New York and Paris in offering certified vintage watches as part of what it now calls the Collectionneur line. Each store has a stock of around 20 pieces at each time. Yet for the house, this can also be a costly business, and not just because there are many private buyers who simply have no limit on what they will spend to acquire a particular piece. In terms of a bidding war, this can push prices up no end. Similarly, when reselling, particularly for watches, with the exception of very rare highly complicated models, heritage pieces tend to be much more affordable than the modern, sometimes as little as half the cost. For the collector, however, there are huge advantages to buying a vintage watch from the original house, rather than through a dealer. For one, authenticity. Buyers can often be led astray due to the fact that pieces can have just enough authentic parts to believe it’s the real deal, yet this isn’t always the case. In response to growing demand, the likes of Cartier and Vacheron Constantin are
now selling fully-restored timepieces – bought at auction or through private sellers – accompanied with a certificate of authenticity and a guarantee. Renewed Cartier pieces, for example, are all restored by its team of watchmakers in Geneva, who check them against its original ledgers from Jaeger-LeCoultre, which has been the main supplier of movements to the brand. “The fact that they’re vintage doesn’t mean they aren’t in impeccable condition,” Bernhard Berger of Cartier told the Financial Times. “Anything that is offered for sale in a boutique must be in good condition because clients don’t like
patina. Sometimes that means things are restored using as many original parts as possible.” For most, building up a heritage collection is more of a way of protecting its legacy and maintaining its status as institutions by creating a narrative of the brand’s history, as well as creating a stock from which curators can dip into for exhibitions. Perhaps the most impressive of the bunch, Cartier Tradition is a muchunknown arm of the brand specialising in vintage pieces prior to 1970. Today it boasts around 1,500 pieces acquired back by the house, and at any one time, around 300 pieces are made available
Cartier diamond collar necklace made for Sir Bhupinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala
for sale worldwide. It houses some of the most spectacular of all Cartier creations, including a $50million diamond collar necklace made during the 1920s for Sir Bhupinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala. There’s also the Flamingo brooch made from platinum, gold, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and rubies that was acquired for the collection through Sotheby’s auction house for $1.7million. Since its inception, the Cartier Tradition collection has also been used in more than 25 internal exhibitions. Only when the brand buys back a piece which is similar to one they already have in their collection would they consider selling them to international clients – perhaps not so much of a moneymaking scheme after all. Another luxury brand on the same path, Bulgari prides itself on its Heritage Collection, an anthology of splendid one-of-a-kind pieces that recount the evolution of the brand’s style dating back to 1884. Searching for past jewels online has proved fruitful – “Bulgari would like to continue to enrich our heritage collection with pieces that are particularly representative of the iconic traits of the brand,” its website states. “As such, we are interested in selecting necklaces, earrings, rings, bracelets, watches, objects d’art or gems of exceptional quality – produced by Bulgari prior to 1995 – in order to exhibit them at events as loans from private collections. We are also prepared to evaluate these pieces and discuss the possibility of eventually inserting them permanently into our collection.” The Heritage Collection currently consists of around 600 unique pieces purchased from auctions and private collections, with Brand and Heritage Curator Lucia Boscani explaining that it’s “an inestimable asset for us as it encapsulates the essence of Bulgari, highlighting its ability to constantly reinvent itself while also maintaining a strong identity”. One such example is a magnificent sautoir with an oversized pendant and 50-carat sapphire, another gift from Burton to Taylor for her 40th birthday, which is back in Bulgari’s possession. As an extension to the collection, the brand also recently opened Domus above its Rome boutique – a part-salon, partexhibition area displaying the pieces, which is also used for private sales. Aside from financial gains and retaining heritage, a number of fine jewellery
We want to preserve our techniques and be able to reference them whenever our team of craftspeople needs to
Above, Cartier Flamingo brooch. Right: Graff Ruby
and watch brands credit the practice of buying back old pieces due to the fact that they act as a point of reference for contemporary designers. More often than not, elements from old designs are borrowed or alluded to in contemporary work, with Boucheron and Van Cleef & Arpels both solely buying back creations to keep for both private purposes and to inspire new collections. Similarly, Fabergé – who acquired the worldwide rights to the Fabergé name from Unilever in 2007 – may not actually buy back pieces, but still uses pieces loaned from private collectors as inspiration to restore the jeweller’s brand and its association with pre-revolutionary Russia. With consumers these days turning their attentions to vintage designs, this has proven to be a great source of income for the brand, boosting sales of new
collections among those nostalgic for the past. Indeed, although he won’t give exact figures, Fabergé’s executive director Sean Gilbertson has alluded to the fact this has boosted contemporary sales a significant amount. Similarly, Catherine Cariou, Heritage Director of Van Cleef & Arpels, told us, “It’s very important to the heritage of our brand that we collect together as many of our previous works as possible. We want to preserve our techniques and be able to reference them whenever our team of craftspeople needs to.” The effect that the practice of buying back old pieces has on the brand is determined by many factors – the price paid for the allotment at auction, whether it is destined to be restored and resold, or simply kept for an exhibition or reference point. No one would argue,
though, the emotional value that it has for the key players in the company. On buying back the Graff Ruby for $8.6 million at Sotheby’s Geneva in November 2014, Laurence Graff explained, “It was a natural thing to do. Graff deals in the finest gemstones in the world and this is the finest ruby in the world. We are very proud to have it in our possession for the second time.” And in the words of Martin Katz, acclaimed Beverly Hills designer, “I, too, try to repurchase early Martin Katz work. It often comes from the hands of some of my most talented craftsman who have since retired. Other times, it may be a piece containing stones I can rarely find which I placed into a one-ofa-kind piece. The joy of reuniting with a creation like that is indescribable. It’s like a family reunion.” We can only imagine how that feels.
Chimera Ring, GIAMPIERO BODINO
Wearable
Art? MOJEH examines the blurring boundaries between artwork and fine jewellery, discovering that your decorative adornments can be exhibit-worthy and, perhaps, a sensible investment.
Words by Annie Darling
Hi gh Jew els
With This Rock, photographed by Federico de Angelis
I
t’s not uncommon for a jeweller to craft small objets d’art for a coterie of high-society friends. Lotus Arts de Vivre co-founder Helen von Bueren began with gem-set knitting needles and hand-carved coral tongue scrapers. Her interest in sculpture subsequently flourished and Lotus’s jewellery became more bold and distinctive. Von Bueren’s ornate and adventurous designs soon became a favourite among European art collectors, including a furled black diamond dragon with piercing bloodred Burmese rubies for eyes and a goldplated sterling silver peacock necklace, which drapes its abalone shell feathered tail around the wearer’s neck. The world of jewellery has two kinds of
Metallic-coloured wings of scarab beetles are trimmed and affixed with rose-cut diamonds and facetted rubies. Photographed by Yuriko Takagi, LOTUS ARTS DE VIVRE
treasures: Items whose value is obvious, given all the precious jewels involved – Afghan emeralds, Ceylon sapphires and Persian turquoise; as well as items that are more obscure, whose value hinges on the owner’s understanding of their cultural context or inspiration. For London-based gallerist Louisa Guinness, it’s an important distinction. As the only dealer in Britain specialising in jewellery designed by artists, as opposed to professional jewellers, she appreciates “deeply unconventional” pieces “that appeal to wearers with avant-garde tastes and an eye for the unusual”. Creations that possess sculptural qualities or an elaborate structure are more likely to be accepted by the art
world. An avid collector, Guinness has previously commissioned a necklace shaped like a light bulb by Michael CraigMartin, as well as a strawberry-shaped, diamond-encrusted pendant by sculptor Marc Quinn. James Taffin de Givenchy, Manhattan jeweller and nephew of the famous couturier, places a special emphasis on a company’s artisans. This is important, he argues, when deciding whether a creation can be considered art. “What we [craftsmen] do is art.” He continues, “You have a personal vision and it doesn’t matter whether you use someone else to make it happen or whether you create a piece by hand yourself. You are ultimately involved at every step and you make it
Alexander Calder, Untitled Brooch, 1940, silver, 11.5 x 5.5cm, unique, image courtesy of the Calder Foundation and Louisa Guinness Gallery
exactly the way you want. It’s art. It’s a passion.” Sean Gilbertson, CEO of Fabergé, concurs. “Jewellery designers are artists in the sense that they paint with the finest coloured gemstones and vibrant enamel palette, using precious metals and skillful techniques to create impeccably detailed works of art.” After all, to master contemporary jewellery design, an artisan must become an expert in nielloware, stone-setting, metalsmithing and enamelling. There are additional similarities, too. “Jewellery designers, similar to conventional artists, draw on inspiration from varied sources, such as nature, culture, and history.” Nonetheless, it takes an exceptional jeweller to be endorsed, let alone accepted, by art industry giants, largely
because of the ingrained and somewhat outdated notion that an artist should be a garret-dweller: Someone who struggles to acquire even the most inexpensive materials. While artists creating jewellery is nothing new – Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Max Ernst are just a few of the celebrated names to dabble in ‘wearable art’ – tension between material value and conceptual rigor remains fierce between traditional artists and craftsmen. In response, American sculptor Alexander Calder adopted ambivalence towards the commercial appeal of jewellery, as well as a disregard for wearability, opting for aluminum, iron wire and copper rivets when handcrafting his one-of-a-kind splendid jewellery creations. Calder’s work set the stage for the post-World War II art jewellery movement, while critically acclaimed constructivist Margaret de Patta experimented with jewellery as a form of expression, as well as constructivism. These industry leaders popularised modest jewellery that could be both worn and appreciated for its artistic merit. The 20th Century also had its share of master jewellers. Peter Carl Fabergé, Verdura and Suzanne Belperron began producing jaw-droppingly spectacular items. Their legacy, as well as that of the era, continues to influence contemporary jewelers, who unleash their creativity using more abstract, albeit bejewelled, designs today. More recently, the late architect Zaha Hadid turned her hand to fine jewellery on behalf of Swiss maison Caspita, as well as Lebanese jewellers House Mouzannar. Meanwhile, Stephen Webster’s collaborative collection with British artist Tracey Emin was released earlier this year. Hong-Kong based artist Wallace Chan grew up in extreme poverty and now designs some of the most expensive jewellery in the world. Neither the financial value nor an artisan’s background, he argues, should impact whether a jewellery creation is considered art. “Art is free. Art embodies the true, the good and the beautiful.” In fact, Chan argues that jewellery can be considered a higher and more intricate form of art. “It is easier to create a painting, a sculpture or a conceptual art piece than a piece of jewellery art, because for an art piece to function as a piece of jewellery, it has to be wearable. “The materials, the weight, the size and shape, the light and colours must all be considered. There are a lot of practical constraints and only through repeated practices and constant innovations can the process of creation become free.”
Kunzite Floral Bangle
The Art Jewel 2009 Royal Butterfly
Kunzite Floral Earrings
The Art Jewel 2010 Crimson Rose Butterfly Brooch, all CINDY CHAO
Gilbertson agrees that there are significant differences. “Artists generally work alone and produce their pieces as a form of self-expression. Creating a piece of exquisite jewellery requires teamwork.” Artisans do “impart a sense of their own self into the designs”, he adds, but functionality must also be carefully considered. This idiosyncratic approach to jewellery – treating it as both a personal adornment and sculpture – is part of a creation’s allure and artistic merit. Chan believes that educating people about the intricate world of stones is key to how jewellery is perceived worldwide. “Some people collect jewellery out of their passion for gemstones, colour and light. They may see jewellery as an emotional embodiment, something that nurtures their spiritual being.” But ultimately, for Chan, jewellery is a self-existing form of art, because of the message and symbolism each piece represents. “Painters use paint, musicians use notes, and jewellery creators use gemstones,” he reveals. “Like paintings, sculptures, music and poetry, jewellery is a form of expression.” Originally a carver, Chan is proof that a varied career and background adds to a craftsman’s skill, which in turn, adds artistic value to his or her creation.“I apply my experiences and knowledge as a carver and sculptor on my jewellery creations and constantly nurture my skills and think through the learning of other art forms.” Chinese ink paintings, music, poetry and architecture are particular inspirations. “I believe that all art forms share a common origin.” Throughout history, jewellery has been largely defined as personal adornment. This may seem obvious. After all, the sole function of jewellery is to be worn. But, in the last century, more people are choosing instead to purchase ‘vault pieces’, items that are bought and stored as a financial investment. It seems that while some are hesitant to admit jewellery can be considered art, many agree pieces have an obvious decorative function. Chan’s jewellery is often accompanied by sculptured carvings, which function as display cases, while Cartier’s rock crystal platforms transform opulent items into ornaments. “True to
Rise of the Heart sculpture featuring rubies, citrines, amethysts and yellow diamonds, WALLACE CHAN
its legacy, Fabergé today creates pieces to be collected as future heirlooms,” admits Gilbertson. “Importantly,” he adds, “Fabergé jewellery is designed to be worn, cherished and admired, rather than merely put in a vault.” Jewellery worn in medieval Europe reflected an intensely hierarchical and status-conscious society. Historically, royalty wore gold and silver, while lower ranks wore base metals. It seems a shame that in today’s day and age, many view high jewellery in a similar way – as a soulless object. “The fact that jewellery creators use gemstones also makes it easy for people to overlook the value of creativity, cultural stories and craftsmanship – very often, the high value of the gemstones outshines other elements,” explains Chan. Despite worldwide financial insecurity, Haute Joaillerie is thriving; much of it is one-of-a-kind and can cost millions, largely because of expensive gems and rarity, which Givenchy says is key to a piece’s worth, both financially and as artwork. “In this day and age, how many things in the world are one of anything?” Gilbertson agrees. “Rarity is, of course, a key driver in drawing the link between art and mere jewellery.” At Boodles, for example, sales of jewellery valued at more than AED 264,000 have tripled in the last five years. The average price of an item from Chanel’s Fine Jewellery collection has risen to about AED 1,612,000 from AED 1,007,000, while Piaget has raised the value of its high jewellery collection by 30 per cent. So, do jewellers belong to the world of art or craft? A recurring question; a topic frequently visited. If money’s an indicator, one can logically assume the former. There has been an explosion of activity in the market for art and collectables, including the likes of musical instruments and classic cars, as well as fine jewellery. But perhaps, rather than the artwork, the answer lies in the intentions of the artist or craftsman. Art is boundary-pushing, meaningful and memorable. To achieve this, there must be emotion and passion behind its creator. If a jewellery designer possesses these qualities, why can’t his or her work be considered art?
S e e i n g
RED What makes a Mozambique ruby one of the most sought after today? MOJEH takes a journey of discovery to Africa.
This rosewood-hued Mozambique ruby strikingly sits as the centrepiece of a Faberge flower surrounded by delicate diamonds and sapphires forming its petals. A ruby of good colour and clarity was traditionally believed to keep the body safe, drive away negativity and impose peace on its wearer.
Fine jewellery brands, such as Stephen Webster – who’s feather-like ring features both marquis- and round-cut rubies from Montepeuz - look towards Gemfields’ stones due to their social responsibility activities and transparency in market route.
J ewelle r y J o u r n e y
A ruby’s colour is defined by its hue, tone and saturation. This is finalised on site and before it’s taken to auction as colour has a huge influence on the value of the stone. ‘Pigeons blood’ is traditionally the rarest and most sought after tone, defined by its fluorescent scarlet colour.
When corundum intrudes a host rock rich in CR, Fe and V, it gains a redish pink colour, simultaneously turning it in to what we know today as a ruby. Millions of years in the making and purely a perplexing product of Mother Nature, rubies are rare and mesmerising to say the least. Fine-quality ones currently demand the highest price of any colour gemstone today, and one location in particular is garnering the majority of attention from conscious precious stone buyers – with nearly 20 million carats discovered in just four years. In early June 2016, we travelled to the highlands of Mozambique to visit one of the world’s most exceptional ruby deposits, Montepuez, owned by Gemfields. As we stood on the almost-barren land – which was nothing more than farmland up until 2009 when its first ruby was discovered – scattered beneath us were tiny flecks of red and pink fragments: rubies in their most minute form. More than 500 million years ago, these delicate gemstones began forming during the Pan-African tectonic event and unlike other coloured stones such as emeralds, rubies remain close to the earth’s surface and are often swept up by streams of water, offering individuality and character to each stone as they’re effected by harsh weather conditions – no two stones can ever possibly be the same. As we dug a little deeper, the coloured flecks became fewer and further between, yet larger and more perplexing. Stones at Montepuez are celebrated for being more luminous and brighter than other rubies found around the world, due to a lack in iron content. Varying in hue from deep red to greyish pink, some were transparent when held up against the Mozambique sun and others rife with inclusions, telling tales of their millions of years.
Unearthing the precious stones is a delicate business and almost everything has to be done by hand to avoid cuts or inclusion. Gemfields has created the world’s first grading system for rough rubies, which considers carat, clarity and colour, enabling more transparency for buyers than has previously been allowed in the past.
Each coloured stone caries its own illustrious history, myths and tradition and rubies have long been believed to be symbols of passion, protection and prosperity – especially in Eastern cultures where the stone is said to represent the beauty of the soul.
T r a v e l
WRITER Montblanc’s latest diamond-clad writing instrument is a fitting homage to the great adventures of Marco Polo.
He couldn’t have known it at the time, but when great explorer Marco Polo was writing his memoirs, Il Milione (or The Travels of Marco Polo), more than 700 years ago, his fascinating words inspired not only future generations of travellers, such as Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, but also future luxury manufacturers – not least German marque, Montblanc. Taking its design inspiration from the time Marco Polo spent trading precious gemstones while serving great Mongolian King Kublai Khan, the Montblanc Homage to Marco Polo ‘Il Milione’ Limited Edition is a writing instrument for those who truly appreciate the finer things in life. Every detail of this exquisite fountain pen has been designed to perfection – from the cap set with a full pavée of dark red rubies and cognac-tone diamonds, to the barrel featuring a diamond-set world map inspired by Polo’s travels that is revealed when the cap is removed. The clip is shaped like the golden pass (paiza) given to Polo by King Khan to ensure his safe passage through Khan’s kingdom, while a compass rose is worked into the cap top beneath the Montblanc emblem, revealing itself by virtue of a special mechanism. The pen’s nib is made from 18-karat solid champagne gold and is designed in such a way as to represent Polo’s crossing of the desert, taken from the Catalan Atlas; while, at the other end of the instrument, the pièce de résistance is a skeletonised gold cone, set with a majestic 6.12-carat diamond.
The W r i t i n g I n s t r ume n t
Je w e l s o f t h e
Louvre Four priceless pieces from the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s permanent collection.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi has to be one of the most hotly anticipated openings in the history of the UAE. While at the time of writing an opening date still hasn’t been confirmed, with the arrival of experienced Frenchman Manuel Rabaté as museum director, it is hoped that the museum will be ready to start welcoming guests in 2017. Here, we pick out four of our favourite gilded pieces from the museum’s collection that you’ll be able to see when doors finally open.
Collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece Origin: Flanders, 16th Century AD Materials: Enamelled gold Founded in 1430 by Philip the Good, the Order of the Golden Fleece is considered to be the highest and most prestigious decoration in all of Western history. While many orders of chivalry were created and established throughout the Middle Ages, including many important European orders such as the Order of the Garter established in 1348 by Edward III of England, the Order of St Michael founded in 1469 by Louis XI of France or the Order of the Holy Spirit founded in 1578 by Henry III of France, the Golden Fleece has always had something of a mythical aura, no doubt arising from the connection with Jason and the Argonauts on their quest to conquer the Golden Fleece in Colchis.
Eagle-shaped fibula from Domagnano
This eagle-shaped fibula is an essential piece of the fabulous treasure of Domagnano, discovered in 1893 in the Republic of San Marino. The fibula, which is a kind of brooch, was meant to be worn on the shoulder as a pair. Its belly is composed of a round medallion with a cruciform motif. Made according to the cloisonné technique – a process that was imported by the East Germanics from the Pontus region and is characterised by the inclusion, in cold, of semi-precious stone plates or coloured glass into the cells separated by metallic partitions – the entire surface was embellished in more than 220 gold partitions, largely with garnets, though lapis-lazuli and ivory were also used.
h i d d e n jewel s
Photographs © Louvre Abu Dhabi/Thierry Oliver
Origin: Republic of San Marino, 5th Century AD Materials: Gold and garnets
Planispheric astrolabe Origin: Morocco, 1139 Materials: Cast and engraved brass with silver studs The interest of the Islamic world in Greece began in the first centuries of Islam and focused on many of the achievements of Greek civilisation, especially astronomy – the emblem of which is the astrolabe. The astrolabe is a scientific instrument that has been known at least since the days of Ptolemy (c. 90–c. 168) and is composed of a stereographic projection of the celestial sphere on a flat disc, which enables the user to measure the height of the sun or a star so as to locate himself in space and therefore determine the particular important moments of the day, such as sunrise, noon, and prayer times.
Lion bracelet Origin: Ziwiye, Iranian Azerbaijan, Iran, 8th-7th Century BCE Materials: Gold This bracelet is rightly considered to be one of the major masterpieces of Iranian gold work. The body of the bracelet is made of a thick curved bulrush. At the centre of the curve, the edges widen to form a lozenge, on which are placed two symmetrical pairs of high-relief hieratic lion cubs lying down on either side of the central area. But most remarkable are the two full-round sculpted bristling adult lion heads with open mouths, placed at each end of the bracelet. The opposition of the two figures creates a classic arrangement in the purest Iranian tradition.
D o m e st i c
b l i ss Most jewellery is designed to elevate its wearer from the mundane comfort of domesticity, so when the same subject is explored through jewellery, an interesting dichotomy is created. Here, we discover the works of Maisie Broadhead and Ted Noten, two artists who play on this juxtaposition to create works as challenging as they are beautiful.
Words by Jareh Das
A RT
Masie Broadhead’s Pearls blurs the separation between image and object, while Ted Noten’s Chew Your Own Brooche, left, gives the audience a part in the design process
Home Is Where The Heart Is - Ted Noten
D
omesticity connotes feelings of intimacy and memory. It also brings the home into central focus as a site that embodies our first social encounters with others. Everyday objects found in homes carry within them symbolic meanings across cultures, and when artists draw on domesticity as a theme, there exists a desire to transform this physical space into a mental one, where memories of distant use are put in dialogue with the intimate feeling that characterises the creation of artworks. In this regard, jewellery is apt for exploring the domestic both for its use and function, especially when traditional narratives are subverted to create new meanings. Maisie Broadhead and Ted Noten are makers who have explored the domestic in their jewellery practice. Both artists with immensely divergent practices, bring together the historic with the contemporary to question this familiar and recognisable site and the objects that inhabit it. The home, family and community feature in their artworks and in doing so, exposes the dichotomies existing between private and public especially when normative use requires jewellery to be worn and shown off, as well as safe guarded and hidden away the more precious it is. Jewellery bears different meanings across different geographies as it is culturally specific and has historically served as currency, objects of desire, signs of affluence, love, greed, desire etc. Since graduating from London’s Royal College of Art in 2009, Maisie Broadhead began juxtaposing photography and jewellery with sculptural elements to explore the overlooked. These explorations began with domestic objects and tools, and later progressed into decoding the hidden messages jewellery often carries in classical paintings and portraiture, including suggestions of lost love, a broken
This image and below: Keep Them Sweet - Masie Broadhead
engagement and secret promises. Decoding messages led to her, as she describes, “retelling and recreating new narratives through recognisable compositions, and creating pieces of jewellery to accompany them.” In an early series, Domestic Jewellery, 2007, Broadhead created a collection of silver jewellery inspired by the English home, but elevated the normative functions of the pieces by means of making them out of more than just the precious metal. Objects including a sink plug, light cord and screws were cast in silver and transformed into precious objects, thus alleviating them from their everyday mundane functions and usual domestic (private) interiors. Jewellery Depicted, 200912, on the other hand, takes each photograph as a modern day reinterpretation of a historical painting where jewellery is at the centre of the image’s meaning. The jewellery acts as an essential prop within each of the images, but the image and object co-exist, side by side and informing each other. Pearls, 2016, takes this even further, blurring the separation between image and object as the works are a restaging of classical 17th Century portraits depicting female sitters usually before marriage and presenting, or rather advertising, them as desirable. These images were intended to seduce, although these marriages at the time served strategic religious and political alliances. Pearls are featured prominently in these historic works as symbols of innocence, beauty, religious and sexual purity. However, Broadhead interrupts this narrative by bringing out actual strings of pearls from the frames, giving them sculptural elements, which suddenly disrupts these depictions of idyllic portraits of women into showing the realities of their commodification. This is also evident in titles including Ball and Chain, Heavy Load and Purity. As Scholar Kimberly Chandler observes, “The pearls and the body
In the works of Broadhead and Noten, jewellery’s private-public dichotomy and relationships to the home are questioned
that wears them become indistinguishable. This intention: like the pearl, the female subject can be traded, owned and set aside.” Ted Noten draws on the history of jewellery and wider context of product design but serves it as a critique on contemporary life through investigating familiar themes, including violence, mortality, excess, love and ageing. He challenges the familiar by expanding the possibilities in both in his working practice and attitudes towards what jewellery can be by transferring it from private to public. This is observable in the fact that his working methods transfer into a public realm where making becomes a shared experience, which Noten describes as, “moving away from a maker’s introspection, from the microscopic and quest for perfecting one’s craft and into engaging one’s working process with a public.” For Noten, it becomes a process of democratising jewellery when it is taken out of museums and private possession, and enters into the public sphere. His project, Chew Your Own Brooch, for example, takes chewing gum found stuck on streets across cities and transforms it into wearable and celebratory objects. Participants were provided with a chewing kit and had to send back the chewed gum to Noten, which he then cast in gold or silver. The work has a playful element and turns the ordinary into a prized possession, but importantly it gives everyone a part in the design process. In Home Is Where The Heart Is, 2014, a work exhibited as part of Ted’s House installation at Design Miami 2014 where Noten created a house as a self-portrait, the work is a handmade silver necklace in an edition of three with sliver-casted leaves taken from houseplants belonging to the artist remade into a more valuable item. Ted’s Cane, 2014, for when he turns 80, is a readymade piece consisting of wood, 3D printed nylon, 24kt gold leaf, diverse pills, feathers and parts of an Adidas soccer shoe. All of these elements transform this regular walking aid for the elderly into a playful object, which might be filled with positive pills or even be used as a safe for precious ornaments. The necklace, cane and other items made for the house including other jewellery items, a conversation table and various other objects from Noten’s daily life, presented a bringing together of old and new, alongside showing his vulnerabilities through objects representing his past, present and speculation about the future. Ted’s House as an installation is a selfportrait of sorts, where intimate objects belonging to a familiar environment capture both the domestic settings of the past, framed by a contemporary cityscape that adorns the walls. This has been described as ‘tradition meets technology’, which, considering the installation, speaks volumes
Below and left: Domestic Jewelley, Below left: Which Weigh To Go, both Masie Broadhead. This image: Grandma’s Bag, Ted Noten
about our own individual encounters with the transformations of the home as a site of privacy to one that is now saturated with technological advancements, most notably the ways in which internet facilitates sharing and continues to blur the lines between what constitutes public and private space. In the works of Broadhead and Noten, jewellery’s private-public dichotomy, preciousness, display, relationships to the home and everyday encounters are exposed and questioned, thus allowing for new ways of thinking about it and the stories that are told through these objects. Whenever the domestic is mentioned, there seems to be an anxiety around the home, what it throws up, and use of what might be deemed ‘traditional craft methods’. These artists negotiate myths around modernist perceptions of private versus public moving on from these binary discussions in order to present new perspectives on art, society and politics using the platform of the domestic.
Industry cheekiness combined with technical excellence, or simply childish profligate in bad taste? MOJEH lifts the lid on the world of erotic watches.
B
efore he died in 1919, Canadian physician and author Sir William Osler said, “The natural man has only two primal passions: to get and to beget.” In this satisfyingly succinct quote, Osler refers to the basic human urges that follow us wherever we go: to get (food, water, shelter, wealth) and to beget (sex, in order to reproduce). Owing to their innate importance to human nature, these primal urges have long been the source of inspiration for creatives in everything from music and film, to fine art and even fine horology. Yet, while many wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a risqué lyric in a song, a sex scene in a film or a nude painting,
when it comes to horology, the world of erotica gets much less exposure. They might not get much publicity, but erotic timepieces have, in fact, been around for rather a long time. The earliest can be traced back to the late 17th Century, with ornate pocket watches concealing intimate scenes exported from liberal Europe to hardline China to titillate the more open-minded among the wealthy Chinese. Like most risqué trends of the past, erotic watches soon grew in popularity, and the early 18th Century saw well-heeled gentlemen throughout Europe and America using their timepieces as sources of arousal,
O P INION
Words by Peter Iantorno
H o r o l o g y
while wives of the worldly men of Britain’s Royal Navy routinely presented their globe-trotting husbands with romantic keepsakes to remember them by while on their travels. As the years passed, advancements in technology and the development of complications such as the minute repeater (well-suited to animating, say, a repeated thrusting action…) would see erotic timepieces reach their climax by the end of the 18th Century. By virtue of a sizeable drop-off in production since their heyday, today’s titillating timepieces are becoming increasingly collectible, with some of the world’s elite watchmakers producing explicit yet highly technical creations in exclusive limited runs. Among the most impressive modernday examples is Blancpain’s Le Brassus Erotic Minute Repeater Carrousel, which features an elegant white grand feu enamel dial with Roman numeral hour marks and carrousel at six o’clock, yet hidden on the caseback is a jacquemart of an embracing couple, animated by the action of the minute repeater. Other notable brands to embrace the trend for erotic horology in recent years are the likes of Ulysse Nardin with its Hourstriker Erotica Jarretiere, Andersen Genève with its Eros series and Perrelet with its Erotic Dial Limited Editions, which focus on the erotic Japanese art form of Hentai. While all these creations err on the side of explicit rather than risqué, there are a few examples of slightly subtler erotic timepieces that manage to toe the line. Chief among these is Richard Mille’s RM 69 Erotic Tourbillon. A magnificent example of technical watchmaking, the piece features a mechanical movement comprising 505 components powering three titanium rollers inscribed with suggestive phrases, which display a random saucy message every time the wearer presses the button at the 10 o’clock position. Of course, the fact that erotic timepieces such as this are often technical masterpieces is scant consolation for those who decry the use of erotica in any way, shape or form – and certainly, the image of a chuckling millionaire sniggering immaturely every time he activates the erotic function on his watch is not a pleasant one. Yet, for those who appreciate the history, technical skill and creativity that go into the creation of erotic watches, they remain one of the lesser talked-about pleasures of the horological landscape.
Photographed by Anthony Arquier
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