BVLGARI’S ‘CARRYING CULTURE’ THROUGH THE MINAUDIÈRE COLLECTION

words by VERONICA TLAPANCO SZABÓ

Of all the things a handbag might hold, culture feels like the most unexpected and still the most BVLGARI. With Carrying Culture, the House proposes an idea, when a bag is too small for a phone, it leaves room for meaning. Proposed by Mary Katrantzou, the Creative Director of Leather Goods and Accessories, the BVLGARI ICONS Minaudière collection distills over 140 years of Roman High Jewelry into jewel-like objects. Drawing on the ancient notion of the icon as eikṓn, a likeness, a portrait, a symbolic representation, each minaudière is conceived as an “objet d’art”.

all images courtesy of BVLGARI

The collection revisits five enduring BVLGARI emblems the Monete, Serpenti, Tubogas, Divas’ Dream, and BVLGARI BVLGARI which all get reimagined in precious metal form. In the debut campaign, photographed by Ethan James Green, five extraordinary women, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Linda Evangelista, Kim Ji-won, Isabella Rossellini, and Sumayya Vally, embody these icons, each lending her voice to the Minaudière narrative.

A defining gesture of the collection lies in its scale, it's been designed to hold almost nothing, the minaudières will instead “carry culture,” housing miniature books authored by these women, a wisdom that is worth making space for. Produced in limited edition, and marking BVLGARI’s first dedicated evening collection, each piece is crafted using lost-wax techniques, hand-enameling, pavé settings, and stone inlays. Suspended from delicate chains and finished with cabochon-set openings, these minaudières might be small in size but they invite us to carry less, and cherish more.