Hiring a world-class architecture firm to design a tiny temporary retail space may seem an extravagant choice, but given the high aspirations of Tiffany & Co.—especially now that it’s owned by the French luxury conglomerate LVMH—it makes sense for the American jewelry company’s Paris debut under its new French banner.

Tiffany already operates several retail spaces in the French capital. But for the launch of its first jewelry collection since 2021, when the 185-year-old American brand was acquired by LVMH, it tapped theRotterdam-based firm OMA, founded by Rem Koolhaas, to design the cozy, 861-square-foot space, which opened earlier this year. Tiffany is not the first jewelry house to hire OMA for a Paris outpost: The firm is also behind the design of 

. The new temporary Paris space also follows another Tiffany collaboration with OMA (in this case, with the firm’s New York studio, led by Shohei Shigematsu), for the overhaul of its 

The Paris pop-up occupies a space previously occupied by Dior Joaillerie, on a prime corner of Avenue Montaigne, opposite the newly revamped Dior flagship. It is an appropriate location for this prized addition to the luxury behemoth that also owns brands such as Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Loewe.

“We were given a lot of freedom to come up with fresh ideas,” says OMA partner Ellen van Loon, who notes that the space is meant to serve as a one-year “test case.” “The brief called for a space that brings new energy and a new look to the brand.”

The architects were less concerned with coming up with an efficient retail layout than conveying a message of freshness with a nod to heritage. “Tiffany has a rich legacy, which we felt could be the inspiration for its future. History became an important ‘ingredient’ of our design,” van Loon says.

Visitors enter the boutique through a lapis blue-colored rotunda that serves as both exhibition and retail space. On its walls, fabric-lined glass niches and vertical digital screens display vintage Tiffany-designed jewelry. Wall-to-wall blue gradient carpeting fades into a cream shade at the far end of the interior, enhancing a sense of bodily immersion. “The first room is like a cocoon,” van Loon says.

Under the light of antique Tiffany lamps, this month’s curated selection of archival jewelry features highlights from the work of designer 

 (1907–1987), including a charming 1960s “Bird of a Rock” brooch, set with a 128.54-carat yellow diamond, and colorful enameled bangles—a Jackie O. favorite. Next month, the spotlight will be on pieces by 

 (1940–2021), widely known for her pure, organic forms and signature sense of pared-down simplicity.

“The decor is adaptive, and the interior will change every three months,” says OMA project architect Giulio Margheri. “Subtle changes throughout the year will create different ambiances that relate to changing collections.”

An octagonal-shaped room serves as the store’s main retail area. Lined with gold-colored aluminum panels, it features a bridal section at the center, with a large display case for current collection pieces on one side and a small alcove with a sofa for try-ons on another. Clients seeking privacy can move into the third and final room, a brighter, more intimate space used for appointments.

What’s perhaps most surprising is that the iconic robin’s-egg blue shade known as “Tiffany Blue” is used only sparingly throughout, as an accent color in some display cases and on a pair of monochromatic paintings by the artist Richard Prince. “We found in Tiffany’s archives a wide range of blues, which we incorporated into the design,” Margheri says. He adds that  bright yellow was used in the vitrines “to add a touch of color to the overall gray of Paris,” but mostly “to celebrate the new energy of Tiffany.”

For a Tiffany & Co. Pop-Up in Paris, OMA Designs a Literal Jewelry Box 

At the entrance of the Australian pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, earplugs are handed out to visitors as a safeguard against what lies inside: “

” (April 23–November 27), an immersive experimental sound project by artist Marco Fusinato that synchronizes stark sounds and images. It features the artist, seated next to a freestanding, floor-to-ceiling LED wall, improvising on an electric guitar, generating short, piercing intervals of screeching feedback and noise.

Those sounds trigger a series of disconnected black-and-white images—including ones of vomiting cats, tilled soil, outer space, police brutality, and old-master paintings, sourced in the thousands from the internet by Fusinato, who chose them for, as he says, their “confounding and weird” qualities—to appear on the black screen in a random variation and a quick succession that mimics the cadence of the clamor. (A 

, recorded on opening day, captures its viscerally disorienting uproar.) “The noise has a sculptural quality to it, and operates as an object in space,” Fusinato says. “It is designed to be a powerful animation that creates a maximalist, physical experience in the [viewer].”

Unlike most live performance artists at the Biennale, whose works only run through its opening week, Fusinato will play in the pavilion all 200 days of the event, embarking on a surreal durational performance that comments on labor, intensity, and perseverance. “This is not a static exhibition, but an evolving work where the composition of the work will take different forms,” the pavilion’s curator, Alexie Glass-Kantor, said at a press conference ahead of opening day. “Every time an audience experiences the work, it will be unique. Once the audience is gone, the artist will focus on the noise and the images at a pace that is both live and alive.”

The high-anxiety performance was born, Fusinato says, out of the “frustrations, pessimism, and turmoil” he felt during the extended Covid 19–related lockdowns in Melbourne, where he lives and was largely confined to his home. The work’s title, the Spanish word for “disaster,” is a nod to the life of Spanish artist Francisco Goya, who in his later years was banished to a farmhouse, and during that time, produced his well-known print series “

” (1810–1820), entirely from his imagination.

Fusinato is a trained musician with an interest in experimental music and underground culture. “My approach to music has always been conceptual, never technical,” says Fusinato. “The electric guitar is capitalism’s entertainment tool. Everyone knows its sound. But I didn’t have the patience to play conventional music, so I invented a new language.”

The desire to invent a different sonic vocabulary, he says, relates to his experience as the child of Italian parents who left the country to settle in Australia, where he was born. “They were outsiders to the dominant culture,” he continues. “There’s an irony to the fact that I am now in the same place my parents migrated from, to represent the country they migrated to. This is a collapse of time.”

Not every visitor will love the experience of relentless, dissonant noise. But those who resist the urge to run may find that there is a creative, poetic quality to the unpredictability of the sounds and images, and a powerful presence in the ways that the noise fills the space. “The noise is confounding; it creates friction,” Fusinato says. “But it also reminds us that the world is a violent place—and that we are alive.”

Marco Fusinato’s Ear-Piercing Endurance Performance at the Venice Biennale

From the looks of things, physical retail may well be losing out to e-commerce (and perhaps soon, 

 for brick-and-mortar stores appears to be on the horizon, and if the architects at the Paris-based firm Moinard Bétaille have their way, luxury boutiques in particular could see a sort of renaissance in the months and years ahead.

The studio’s recently completed, top-to-bottom redesign of Cartier’s Milan flagship points to such a shift—and to the potent power of high-touch, in-person experiences (especially following the recent 

). From the outside, little has changed from what was there before, given that the façade of the four-story palazzo on Via Montenapoleone is historical and protected. But inside, the 4,800-square-foot space has been transformed with a bold new Milanese identity and a playful sense of operatic drama.

“We looked at Milan’s culture for inspiration, and La Scala was a big part of it,” says the firm’s president and founder, Bruno Moinard, referencing Milan’s famed opera house. “We worked on creating verticality, sweeping visibility, and light. Clients walk into this store like onto a stage.”

Various elements entirely definitive of Milan were synthesized and infused in the store’s interior design, a scheme that blurs the line between commercial and residential. Past the glass entrance, visitors are immersed in a theatrical ambience created by double-height ceilings with long curtains that hang down two floors, as if framing a stage. Exaggerated display shelves draw the visitor’s gaze upward; mirrors on not-quite-straight posts in a central rotunda underline the space’s soaring verticality. On the walls, Riva yacht–inspired mahogany panels mix with Gio Ponti–esque floor motifs in the mosaic tiles and the carpeting. Gone are the imposing bronze vitrines, replaced by softer, “champagne”-colored hardware that brings a light and bubbly energy to the neutral tones throughout.

In the back of the boutique, a white marble staircase lined in white stucco walls carved in leaf and panther motifs takes visitors up to a high jewelry floor; then on to a casual bar area, on the third floor; and finally, to a V.I.P. space known as “La Residence,” on the top floor. There, an informal dining area and relaxed living room with plush velvet upholstered furnishings open up onto a green wall and rooftop garden designed by Milanese architect Stefano Boeri.

Until five years ago, all of Cartier’s stores were identical inside. “Now,” Moinard says, “the boutiques are being redesigned with a local character, a welcoming feel so that clients come in to spend time and return often to discover the detail of an interior that feels like a home.”

Milan is just a taste of what’s to come: Moinard Bétaille is currently implementing a refreshed, expanded vision for Cartier, working on the redesign of around 25 boutiques each month. Also under renovation is the brand’s historic flagship at 13 rue de la Paix in Paris, set to reopen in 2023.

“The physical boutique is a destination where brands show off their style and their know-how,” Moinard says. It is also one where clients will come—increasingly, one hopes—for a little bit of theater. An experience they won’t be able to find, in its rich sensoriality, online.

In Milan, a New Cartier Flagship Celebrates the City’s Opera

In 1847, French jeweler Louis-François Cartier established a business that bore his last name and specialized in jewels and precious trinkets. About five decades later, the company’s focus expanded to include accessories of its own design. One of Cartier’s grandsons, Louis, joined the family business as its creative director, and set out to find inspiration for developing a distinct visual language that Cartier could call its own.

At the time, Paris was the epicenter of the Islamic art trade, and Louis learned firsthand about the geometric shapes and unexpected color combinations that decorate items from Islamic culture by visiting exhibitions on the subject—including ones at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs—and traveling to several countries, including Egypt, India, and Turkey. He sent his younger brother, Jacques, an expert in precious stones, to India and the Persian Gulf to experience the culture, connect with potential clients, and bring back objects and materials, such as natural pearls, for them to behold. “Beauty, and the curiosity to discover different forms of it, are foundational principles at Cartier,” says Pierre Rainero, the company’s director of image, style, and heritage. “We’ve always looked for beauty elsewhere, in non-Western cultures and in other disciplines.”

A just-opened exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs titled “

Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity

” (on view through Feb. 20, 2022) explores the lasting impact such pieces have had on the house’s designs. (It will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art, which co-organized the project, next spring.) The show, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (whose co-founder, Elizabeth Diller, was the guest on 

), features more than 500 pieces—including Islamic art, books, jewelry, and objects as well as photographs, documents, and other artifacts from Cartier’s archives—that illustrate the creative process that shaped the house’s now-signature style.

The presentation is divided into two parts that form a chronological timeline from the start of the 20th century to today. Visitors first encounter a section focused on the emergence of Islamic art and architecture in Paris, and pieces the Cartier brothers turned to as muses. Among them are objects from Louis’s personal collection, including Indian jewelry, Persian miniature drawings, and opulent Indian pen boxes, set with gold, turquoise, and ivory.

The second half demonstrates how elements borrowed from Islamic art manifest in Cartier designs. While surveying the intricate pieces, some might notice how the motifs on the bindings of the books Louis owned are reproduced, pared down, or reworked to form new patterns. Others may regard increasingly bold mixtures of hues and materials, such as a striking “bib” necklace made from gold, platinum, turquoise, amethyst, and diamonds. Commissioned by the Duke of Windsor for the Duchess of Windsor in 1947, the necklace exhibits the same vibrant blue and violet composition found in Indian enamels. There’s also a diamond-encrusted platinum-and-turquoise tiara from 1936 that reproduces a delicate paisley motif from a headpiece worn by a “female tumbler” seen in a 19th-century Persian painting. A few cigarette cases even incorporate actual cut-outs from Persian miniature drawings onto their enameled and diamond-set surfaces.

Looking at the range of works on view, the exhibition seems to suggest that the influence of Islamic art extends far beyond the jewelry house, and into other cultures and societies across time—a sentiment that Cyrille Vigneron, Cartier’s president and CEO, voiced at the exhibition’s opening last week. Reinterpreting “the richness of other cultures,” he says, “if done respectfully, and without misappropriation, can lead us to create even more beautiful things.”

How Islamic Art Informed Cartier’s Now-Signature Style

La Samaritaine, a historic Parisian department store that towers over the banks of the Seine, spent the last 16 years undergoing an extensive renovation to its art deco building, first built in 1869 and reconstructed in 1930, and the surrounding neighborhood. It reemerged last month as a contemporary campus for top-tier French food, shopping, and culture, anchored by the five-star Cheval Blanc Paris hotel. Inside, the 

—a collaboration between the hotel chain and the French fashion house—promises “happiness in the heart of Paris,” a tall order somehow made attainable through its distinctive blend of wellness treatments and considered design, the latter created by architect Peter Marino. The spa’s director, Sophie Levy Kraemer, and her team spent five years developing a robust array of remedies that combine manual procedures, state-of-the-art technology, and Dior skin-care products. She also worked closely with Marino on the interior, including its textures, colors, furniture, and fixtures. The result is a one-of-a-kind multisensory retreat for the body and mind.

Guests enter by descending a winding limestone staircase lined with woven silver-thread panels, and onto a landing that faces a mosaic-tiled pool that spans nearly 100 feet—the largest in any hotel in town. Natural materials such as oak and leather inform the beige palette of the waiting room, which has the cozy appeal of an elegant Parisian apartment. Procedures take place in one of six spaces, each inspired by a different trait of Dior’s founder, Christian Dior. On a wall in the Mitzah suite, for example, hand-laminated partridge feathers reference an iconic leopard-print outfit worn by the fashion designer’s muse, Mitzah Bricard, while the Sauvage suite, alluding to Dior’s reverence for nature and the architect of La Samaritaine’s 1930 renovation, Henri Sauvage, features a heated, custom-made massage bed lined with alpha-quartz crystals.

A similar sense of tranquil refinement runs through the 48 treatments on offer. Performed by Dior beauty ambassadors (who are trained, as a statement by the spa describes, “by touch, to feel the energy circulating through every tissue”), each technique is a tactile conversation with the body. Guests might opt for the Radiance Detox, involving a thermo-heating mask that eliminates impurities and boosts circulation, or the Precious Energy massage, which uses a series of hot stones—labradorite for grounding and protection, yellow quartz for balance, agate for harmony, and rock crystal for detoxification—to bring out positive energy.

The spa also provides ways to bring its calming experiences home. It’s the only retailer of Dior’s delicately floral Cheval Blanc perfume, created specifically for the space by the house’s nose, François Demachy, as well as a line of Bains de Visage purifying face mists, nodding to the public baths that once occupied a boat anchored on the Seine in front of the building. To incorporate the treatments into your daily beauty regimen, there’s Solutions Professionnelles, a collection of high-performance skin-care products developed by Dior specifically for the spa. We suggest picking up the line’s matrix-firming bioserum, silky peeling lotion, or creamy repairing complex before departing from this heavenly sanctuary.

At the Cheval Blanc Paris, a Dior Spa Offers a Multisensory Oasis for Body and Mind

 was the first design I did that had the ability to become a new classic,” Gaia Repossi says of her first collection for Repossi, the Paris-based jewelry house that was founded in Turin, Italy, by her grandfather in 1957. She debuted Berbere in 2011, four years after she became the artistic director of her family business at age 21, and its signature elements—architectural geometry, dynamic asymmetry, impeccable mirror polishing, and juxtaposition of fullness and space—have since become defining features of the house’s aesthetic, and have been expanded into some 200 designs in four shades of gold.

Berbere represents Repossi’s personal take on the multi-lined tattoos that are customarily inked on the hands and bodies of the nomadic Tuareg women, who are part of North Africa’s Berber people, to protect against evil, cure illnesses, or serve as a social marker. Repossi, who holds a master’s degree in archaeology, translated motifs derived from the ethnic group’s time-honored tradition into minimalistic jewelry. In doing so, she established a fresh, lighthearted version of the opulence for which the Repossi brand is known, and a new canon for how modern, avant-garde jewelry might look and feel.

To mark Berbere’s 10th anniversary, Repossi added colored lacquer to a new series of rings called Chromatic Cities. Each piece consists of the collection’s classic double band—connected under the finger and separated by the designer’s characteristic void—where a thin ring, set with pavé diamonds, hovers near a thick, lacquered ring in one of seven shades that represent the place where the accessory is sold. (A wine-colored version for Paris, and an electric-blue one for New York, were released this week, following editions for Tokyo, Miami, Monaco, Dubai, and London that were revealed earlier this year.) Another celebratory piece, the Berbere Chromatic 10 Years ring, comes in navy lacquer on rose gold, with the slimmer band in black gold and is lined with 38 stones.

Surveying Berbere’s growth over the years, what’s perhaps most striking is the collection’s adaptability: Its design language allowed Repossi to experiment with less conventional pieces, such as ear cuffs or rings made to be worn on two phalanges of a finger. In each piece, she remains true to Berbere’s origins and its wearable, second-skin sensibility, resulting in a design that will likely endure for many decades to come.

The Traditional African Tattoos That Continue to Inform Repossi’s Signature Jewelry Collection

“This is a new world,” says Cyrille Vigneron, president and CEO of Cartier, during a gala dinner he recently hosted on the gleaming shores of Lake Como, “and we must awaken all our senses to rediscover it.” The event marked the unveiling of 

 (“Sixth Sense”), the luxury house’s newest collection. He continues, “High jewelry belongs to the world of sensory stimulation. It magically awakens the senses with vivid emotions that move your heart.”

The Sixth Sense collection is both a renaissance, as Vigneron suggests, and timeless Cartier style, expressed in new ways. Since 1847, when the house was founded, that style has been captured in signature motifs, executed in original pieces with exceptional know-how—many of which are found in the first 90 pieces of the collection, which debuted in Italy in July. Revisiting the classics to honor their eternal appeal has been central to the strategy of Vigneron since he took the top job at Cartier, in 2016, and this heritage-based approach shines bright in the new collection.

Particularly radiant is the bold Pixelage necklace, an abstract rendition of a panther’s coat, one such classic that has graced Cartier’s creations since 1914. This time, the animal is reduced to its “pixelated” image in white and yellow diamonds, punctuated by touches of onyx and set around three golden topazes weighing at 27.34 carats. The Udyana necklace, composed of carved and sculpted emeralds, rubies, and sapphires, is another standout. Its design recalls Jacques Cartier’s travels across India, where, a century ago, he found inspiration in the exotic extravagance of jewels from the Mughal courts. Audacity is also a characteristic of Cartier’s style, found here in the Phaan ring, which features an 8.20-carat ruby set directly above a 4.01-carat rose-cut diamond. The clever tiered construct intensifies the blood-red hues of the ruby by catching the light that traverses the diamond underneath.

“High jewelry is mysterious because the precious stones capture millions of years of the earth’s energy,” Vigneron says. “They have the power to transform us by just touching the skin.”

Cartier’s Newest High Jewelry Collection Was Crafted to Stimulate the Senses

“I’m constantly looking for new links between light and color, but my collections always start as a dream,” says Claire Choisne, creative director of the Parisian jewelry house Boucheron. “Then we use research from our in-house R and D to turn that dream into a concrete idea.” While jewelry houses usually look to their pasts to give life to new creations, Choisne has her sights firmly set on the realm of the unexpected when designing accessories for the 163-year-old company. Her latest collection, 

, unveiled this week in Paris during the city’s fall/winter 2021 haute couture fashion shows, is yet another foray onto a terrain of experimentation, where traditional craftsmanship meets technology in a series of audaciously radiant, one-off creations.

The 27-piece line is striking not only due to the generous volumes of Boucheron’s signature rock-crystal pieces and opal cabochons, but also the mesmerizing color spectrum that Choisne achieved by enhancing natural materials with techniques derived from manufacturing and science. Its most showstopping pieces, such as the Holographique necklace, use an industrial process to spectacular effect: Composed of rounded slices of rock crystal and edged in white gold and diamonds around a 20.21-carat central yellow sapphire, the collar is covered in a holographic coating—made from tiny particles of molten titanium and silver oxide by Saint-Gobain, the seasoned French producer of high-performance industrial materials—that’s typically used on airport runway lights, lenses, and mirrored glass. Transparent and imperceptible to the touch, the compound brings a special luminescence to many of Holographique’s baubles, and varies in intensity depending on the number of layers applied.

Other pieces dazzle with a similar space-age energy. The collection’s Opalescence and Ondes pieces feature white Ethiopian opals that are juxtaposed with diamonds, mother-of-pearl, or strands of graduated opal beads, intensifying their chromatic allure. “To bring out the fire of opals, we created the optical illusion that their color was ‘spilling over’ onto gemstones that we set to imitate their appearance,” Choisne says. The Faisceaux brooch, featuring faceted, conical rock crystals and diamonds set in pink gold, and the flower-shaped Chromatique rings, formed by curved ceramic petals developed from digital scans of peonies and pansies, shine with an unusual luster, exemplifying Choisne’s penchant for reinterpreting classic motifs in Boucheron’s lexicon through an ultramodern lens. “We wanted to capture the colors of the rainbow, the hues of the aurora borealis, or the reflections of a soap bubble,” she says. Surveying Choisne’s iridescent designs, it appears that she succeeded in expressing the magic of the tones, too.

In Boucheron’s Latest Collection, Holographic Effects Meet High Jewelry 

“I don’t just look at stones. I need to touch them, and feel the life inside them,” says Lucia Silvestri, who sources gems for the high-jewelry house 

 and serves as its creative director. “There’s sensuality in the energy of gems born in the depths of the earth.” Such vitality shines through Magnifica, a 122-piece collection made from luscious, primarily cabochon-cut stones, forming some of the

most exquisite pieces designed by the Roman jeweler to date. (Some 200 other items will be added to the collection later this year.)

Unveiled last week in Milan, the line is designed as a tribute to rare gems, the artisans who make the brand’s opulent baubles, and the women who inspire them. Standouts include the Hypnotic Emerald choker, featuring Bulgari’s signature diamond-encrusted serpent nibbling at a 93-carat Colombian emerald; the platinum Metamorphosis necklace, which can be worn in nine different ways and is distinguished by an antique 12-carat cushion-cut Mozambique ruby; and the Mediterranean Queen, a collar inspired by a Bulgari necklace from the ’60s and made from white gold with diamonds, emeralds, and Paraiba tourmalines that weigh in at nearly 500 carats. While imposing in size, each piece is supple, tactile, and surprisingly lightweight.

Magnifica’s vibrant hues and sculptural forms nod to the distinct aesthetic that Bulgari has refined over its 137-year history, particularly in the 1970s, when it opened its first overseas boutique in New York’s Pierre Hotel and its jewelry’s bold tones, generous proportions, geometric shapes, and daring combinations of precious and semiprecious stones set the business apart. Bulgari’s meticulous dedication to its craft especially served a purpose last year, when, with traveling curtailed, Silvestri spent more time than usual in the company’s Italian workshops and guided artisans in creating its latest expertly made pieces. “It is our response to these times,” Silvestri says, “a message of joy and artistic perfection, a magnificent renaissance.”

A Bold Bulgari Collection Pays Tribute to Gems, Women, and Artistry

Nazanin is a Paris-based writer and consultant who specializes in jewelry, watches, and the wider world of luxury. She is a contributor to 

, and other international publications. Her work has taken her to the emerald mines of Colombia, the horological workshops of Switzerland, and the vineyards of Champagne.

Nazanin Lankarani

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