In a world where heritage houses thrive on timeless motifs, the race is on to craft the next instantly recognizable design. While Bulgari leans into its Roman roots with its signature Serpenti creations, Tiffany & Co. expands beyond its blue-box classics with high-impact gemstone collections. Graff continues to command attention with record-breaking diamonds. Here, we’ll look at how these three heritage brands strategize to make their newest pieces as iconic as their legacy collections.
Bulgari: Balancing Boldness and Minimalism
When you think of Bulgari, an image of the Roman Maison’s iconic Serpenti likely comes to mind. The design was born in the 1940s and has come to define the brand as one of its best-selling collections. Such an emblematic design is a blessing and a curse—it anchors a brand in a consistent design language, but it can also restrict a brand from expanding its design codes. This is a delicate balance, one Bulgari has been negotiating for the past seven decades.
The 1980s ushered in the Parentesi collection, with a modular design drawing on shapes from the streets of Rome, emphasizing metals over stones. With the turn of the century came the debut of the B.zero1 (“B” for Bulgari, “zero” for the new millennium, and “1” for infinite beginnings). The collection was very of-the-era, where luxury was anything but quiet. Though the B.zero1 is sleek and timeless, it’s defined by the BVLGARI logo etched into the design.
Today, Lucia Silvestri serves as the Creative Director of Bulgari, a role she’s held since 2013. However, she’s been with the company for over 40 years. Given her history with the Maison, she has a deep, first-hand understanding of the brand’s heritage and evolution. Three years into her leadership came the launch of Diva Dreams. As the name suggests, these designs swung the pendulum back in a bolder direction with a vibrant, colorful, and ultra-feminine aesthetic that screams la dolce vita.
Silvestri found inspiration for Diva Dreams in Rome’s Caracalla Baths, which Bulgari helped fund the restoration of. The mosaic floors of these spectacular ruins feature the fan-shaped motif that became the trademark of Diva Dreams. Silvestri was onto something: the Serpenti’s success hinged on the power of an instantly recognizable shape.
Five years later, Bulgari doubled down on extravagance with the debut of the Magnifica high jewelry collection. Here, the brand pulled out all the stops with designs focused on rare, one-of-a-kind stones and a campaign that featured Zendaya. While the line is clearly aspirational, it propelled Bulgari back into the cultural zeitgeist. Since then, Bulgari’s wares have continued to take center stage on the red carpet, adorned by some of the strongest women in Hollywood, from Priyanka Chopra to Selena Gomez.
In 2024, Bulgari notched a major milestone: 140 years of craftsmanship. To celebrate, the Maison unveiled another high jewelry collection: Aeterna. Designed as a tribute to the brand’s full evolution, this collection largely reinterpreted iconic designs like the Serpenti while pushing creative boundaries. For example, take the Serpenti Aeterna necklace: a diamond choker crafted from over 200 carats and taking 2,800 hours to assemble.
As Silvestri guides Bulgari into its next decade, she is focused on three pillars of lasting success: unique shapes, the power of cultural icons to connect heritage with new generations, and, above all, the timeless tension between boldness and minimalism.
Tiffany & Co.: Reinventing the Codes of Jewelry
Founded in 1837, Tiffany & Co. quickly became the reference point for jewelry design in America and, eventually, around the world. Just over a decade after establishing itself in New York City, the brand began introducing exceptionally sourced gemstones into its collection, earning its founder the nickname “King of Diamonds.”
Thanks to its strong reputation, Tiffany & Co. has had many esteemed designers pass through its doors who have been instrumental in the brand’s enduring, nearly 200-year-old legacy. The most significant is, arguably, Elsa Peretti, an incredibly influential figure in the world of fine jewelry. Peretti joined Tiffany’s in 1974 and is credited with revolutionizing the Maison and establishing the codes we continue to associate with the brand today.
Prior to Peretti’s tenure, Tiffany’s designs were a bit stuck in the past, perceived as more conservative and traditional. The 1970s in New York City were anything but conservative and traditional. The city’s music and art scenes were thriving—it was gritty and vibrant—and Peretti helped bring this sensibility to Tiffany’s jewelry without losing sight of more than a century of heritage.
The inaugural collection Peretti created for Tiffany & Co. was a sensation. Her designs were sleek and unfussy, yet sensual, drawing inspiration from simple shapes found in nature, such as teardrops, bones, and beans. She also incorporated materials like sterling silver, which were considered unconventional for high-end jewelry at the time but served to open Tiffany’s visibility to a broader audience. Peretti’s ability to take organic forms and transform them into elegant jewelry pieces was a revelation. Her designs struck a unique balance between wearability and elegance, making them accessible while retaining an air of luxury.
Peretti’s touch continued to influence Tiffany & Co. until her death at the age of 80 in 2021. It’s no small feat to follow in the path of such a legend, but Chief Artistic Officer for Jewelry and High Jewelry Nathalie Verdeille has met the challenge. Verdeille joined Tiffany’s after a 16-year stint as the Creative Director at Cartier. Three years in the making, her debut collection launched last year: Blue Book 2024, the Tiffany Céleste high jewelry collection.
As a breath of fresh air, the line reached back further into Tiffany’s history, reimagining the work of another iconic designer: Jean Schlumberger. Schlumberger joined the Maison in 1956, well before Peretti, and, like her, drew inspiration from nature. His work interpreted the elements more literally, pairing unconventional materials like coral, shells, and feathers with precious metals. He was also known for his use of more underappreciated stones like aquamarine and for discovering new ones like morganite.
The brand’s latest Blue Book collection clearly echoes Schlumberger’s designs but pushes them further, backed by decades of additional experience and modern technical advancements like 3D printing to refine each piece before it’s brought to life. The result is some of the highest caliber craftsmanship available within the fine jewelry market today.
Céleste was released alongside a unisex collection called Tiffany Titan, designed in collaboration with Pharrell, the music legend and men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton. Between these crossover collaborations with other designers in the LVMH universe and the highly anticipated second collection from Verdeille, it feels like the sky’s the limit as Tiffany & Co. continues to reinvent itself.
Graff: Blending Innovation with Simplicity
Graff has been a custodian of some of the world’s most exceptional gemstones thanks to their unique quality, historical provenance, and exceptional size. It started just over a decade after the Maison was founded in London with the Star of Bombay, a 47.39-carat yellow diamond. Ten years later, Graff acquired another one-of-a-kind gem: the 39.31-carat Imperial Blue, the world’s largest Flawless Fancy Blue diamond, with no visible inclusions or blemishes under ten-times magnification (and “fancy” describing any diamond with a color other than traditional white).
Graff’s momentum didn’t slow down. To date, the Maison is responsible for obtaining dozens of the world’s record-setting stones, including the Graff Lesedi La Rona in 2019—the largest, highest color, highest clarity diamond ever certified by the GIA, and the world’s largest square emerald cut diamond at an astounding 302.37 carats.
In 2010, Graff welcomed its current Design Director, Anne-Eva Geffroy, who came from a multimedia background. She began her design career at Louis Vuitton, crafting handbags, and later made the transition to jewelry with a stint at Van Cleef & Arpels from 2005 up until taking the position with Graff. Geffroy has brought both of these sensibilities—from her work with leather goods and textiles to her jewelry know-how—to her oversight as Design Director. Despite having been a family-run business since 1960, Graff has always been open to innovation and implored Geffroy to fully embrace creative freedom, pulling from these different modalities. Two of her most recent collections certainly embody this playfulness and versatility.
The Wild Flower line is a contemporary tribute to the English Garden, harnessing untamed femininity and joyful irreverence. The collection reimagines the classic floral motif for the modern era, offering four distinct styles with a playful, youthful edge. The beauty of the Wild Flower line is its variety of floral arrangements in different sizes and configurations, from individual blooms and trios to clusters and blossoms lined up in rows. Here, there’s something for every age, every size, every season, and, of course, these designs—gorgeous in their own right—are merely a vessel to carry the extraordinary Graff diamonds and put them on full display.
In contrast, the Laurence Graff Signature series offers versatility in a different respect. This marks the Maison’s first-ever unisex diamond jewelry collection. Despite its common association with femininity, it emphasizes that a little sparkle is truly for everyone. Here, Graff’s exceptional craftsmanship, proven through its jewelry work over the past six decades, combined with Geffroy’s fresh eye for design through the lens of both fashion and jewelry making, come together in perfect harmony as an homage to the brand’s founder, who gives the line its name.
The Laurence Graff Signature series offers a full array of wares, from necklaces to earrings, bangles, and rings. Marked by geometric, architectural forms, each design in the collection is distinctly gender-neutral yet unmistakably Graff, echoing the bold, intricate facets of the house’s signature stones. This personification of the Maison’s gemstones through the use of modern, angular shapes exemplifies the imaginative and tactile perspective Geffroy brings as she ushers the brand through its next era.
While diamonds remain at the core of Graff’s DNA, the brand’s ability to reimagine the canvas for these stones time and time again over its 65-year history is what sets it apart. It has allowed the Maison to remain relevant through generations. Collections like the Wild Flower and Laurence Graff Signature represent Graff’s ability to blend boldness and subtlety, innovation and simplicity, as well as femininity and masculinity, all in reverence to the allure of gemstones.
Three Unique Powerhouse Brands, One Common Goal
Outside of their rich histories in the jewelry space, you might not think there’s much in common between Bulgari, Tiffany & Co., and Graff. Each Maison occupies a different subset, with varying aesthetic codes and target demographics. Yet, we can see that their ultimate objectives are unified in respecting the delicate balance between tradition and modernity—between upholding the legacy that has given rise to the success of the brands today and creating a new legacy for the next generation. In a world keenly focused on immediacy, quick wins, and overnight success, it’s no small feat to remain rooted in the long game, in the steadfast work that transcends time and fleeting trends. Whether balancing boldness and minimalism, reinvention and rebirth, or innovation and simplicity, the common goal is timelessness.
