On March 23, in a city where fashion, design, and artistic expression converge with the intensity of a Caravaggio painting, Bvlgari staged what might be the jewelry event of the year. The Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection made its grand entrance across two of Milan’s most iconic villas, bringing with it over 160 new creations, a constellation of global ambassadors (including newly minted faces Dua Lipa and Jake Gyllenhaal), and a philosophy that treats high jewelry not as mere adornment but as wearable art. If you thought you knew what Bvlgari was capable of, Eclettica is here to recalibrate your expectations entirely.
The scale alone is staggering: 15 transformable pieces (the most the house has ever presented in a single collection), over 50 “millionaire” creations (yes, that means pieces valued at over one million dollars each), and nine Capolavori (Italian for “masterpieces”) that represent the absolute pinnacle of what’s possible when exceptional gemstones meet fearless creativity. But numbers, impressive as they are, don’t tell the whole story. What makes the Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection genuinely compelling is its conceptual ambition: to explore eclecticism not as a style but as a methodology, drawing from sculpture, painting, and architecture to create pieces that challenge what high jewelry can be.
The Philosophy: Artsmanship as Creative Manifesto
Bvlgari has coined a term for what drives this collection: “artsmanship”—a portmanteau that fuses artistic intuition with masterful craftsmanship. It’s not just a clever bit of branding; it’s a genuinely useful concept for understanding how these pieces came into being. Where traditional high jewelry often emphasizes technical virtuosity or gemstone rarity above all else, the Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection approaches each piece as an artistic problem to be solved through multiple creative lenses simultaneously.
CEO Jean-Christophe Babin explained it succinctly: “This collection really represents us, because being eclectic is part of our DNA. Rome itself is eclectic—a place where centuries of art coexist, inspire each other, and constantly generate new beauty. Eclettica distills this spirit: different worlds, different arts, converging into one unmistakably Bvlgari creative language.”
That Roman connection isn’t superficial. Since Sotirio Bulgari founded the house in 1884, eclecticism has been woven into the brand’s identity, the willingness to embrace rupture, diversity, and evolution rather than adherence to a single aesthetic vision. The 1950s brought Bvlgari’s aesthetic revolution with bold colored gemstones and architectural forms inspired by Roman antiquity. Eclettica takes that legacy and pushes it into new territory, treating the entire history of art and design as raw material for contemporary creation.
The Creative Terrains: Sculpture, Painting, Architecture
What distinguishes the Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection from other ambitious launches is its systematic engagement with three distinct artistic disciplines, each contributing different qualities to the final pieces:
- Sculpture brings an exploration of volume and movement. Pieces are conceived three-dimensionally, designed to play with light and depth in ways that change as the wearer moves. The Serpenti Spira cuff, for instance, resembles a Roman column with a writhing serpent wrapped around it, set entirely with white and yellow diamonds. It’s sculptural jewelry that commands space and attention.
- Painting informs color composition and gemstone placement. Like a painter arranging pigments on canvas, Bvlgari’s designers treat colored gemstones as chromatic elements in larger compositions. The result is pieces where emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and diamonds create painterly effects—visual harmonies that evoke specific emotional and aesthetic responses.
- Architecture establishes rhythm, proportion, and structural logic. This is particularly evident in pieces like the Eclectic Embrace collar, which draws geometric inspiration from the Moorish mosaics of Italy’s Sammezzano Castle. The piece features 180 modular elements engineered to allow a rigid form to move naturally with the body.
The Capolavori: Nine Masterpieces Worth Knowing
At the apex of the collection stand nine Capolavori, pieces that represent the furthest reaches of what Bvlgari’s workshops can achieve. Let’s examine some of these extraordinary creations:
The Seres Scarf Necklace
Perhaps the most technically ambitious piece in the entire Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection, the Seres Scarf necklace required over 1,600 hours of labor and comprises more than 1,180 individual components. The result? A white gold necklace that drapes like silk fabric, its sapphires and emeralds arranged in a woven pattern inspired by Art Deco geometry and the groundbreaking paintings of Tamara de Lempicka.
The centerpiece is a detachable brooch set with a 31.90-carat sugarloaf sapphire from Sri Lanka, one of those stones that makes you understand why people have been obsessed with gemstones since civilization began. The technical challenge wasn’t just creating articulation across 1,180 components; it was ensuring the piece maintains perfect drape and movement while supporting substantial gemstone weight. It’s jewelry engineering at the highest level.
The Secret Garden Necklace
Centered on a 26.65-carat Padparadscha sapphire from Sri Lanka, this piece evokes the hidden courtyards of Rome. Padparadscha sapphires, with their unique peachy-pink hue, are among the rarest colored gemstones in existence. Finding one of this size with exceptional color and clarity is an event in itself.
The composition unfolds around this central stone with sapphires, emeralds, onyx, and diamonds arranged in precise geometric contrasts that enhance the Padparadscha’s warmth and radiance. Every element has been meticulously calibrated to create harmonious balance, the kind of work that looks effortless but requires decades of experience to execute.
The Serpenti Illusio Necklace
This piece made its red carpet debut on Priyanka Chopra Jonas at the 98th Academy Awards, just a week before the official Eclettica launch. Crafted from 235 elements over more than 1,300 hours, the necklace features a 14.01-carat antique cushion-cut sapphire from Madagascar set in a serpent silhouette that reads, at first glance, like pure geometric abstraction.
The Serpenti motif, Bvlgari’s signature since the 1940s, gets completely reimagined here. The design distills serpentine movement into flowing, three-dimensional geometry that moves gracefully with the body. It’s the kind of piece that rewards sustained attention, revealing new details and perspectives as you study it.
The Serpenti Infinia Bracelet
Entirely set with diamonds, including a one-of-a-kind 7.49-carat diamond adorning the snake’s head, this bracelet represents Serpenti design taken to its logical extreme. When you’re setting an entire bracelet with diamonds of sufficient quality to meet Bvlgari’s standards, you’re not just making jewelry. You’re making a statement about what’s possible when resources and ambition align.
The Neoclassic Starlight Necklace
Anne Hathaway wore this high-wattage creation to the Oscars: an 8.02-carat pear-cut Fancy Vivid Yellow diamond set in platinum and surrounded by an additional 35 carats of white diamonds. Fancy Vivid Yellow is the top color grade for yellow diamonds, and stones of this size with that saturation are exceptionally rare.
The neoclassical design references the symmetry and proportion of ancient Greek and Roman art, while the gemstone arrangement creates a thoroughly contemporary starburst effect. It’s jewelry that manages to feel both timeless and of-the-moment.
The Red Carpet Prelude: Oscars 2026
The Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection made a strategic early appearance at the 98th Academy Awards, where two Capolavori pieces appeared on the Dolby Theatre stage. Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s Serpenti Illusio necklace and Anne Hathaway’s Neoclassical Starlight creation generated immediate buzz, serving as both a preview and a proof of concept. These weren’t just beautiful pieces for exhibition; they were wearable works of art that could hold their own on the world’s most photographed red carpet.
The fact that Hathaway also wore the transformable Daphne’s Laurel earrings, inspired by the myth of Apollo and Daphne, demonstrated another Eclettica strength: versatility through transformation. Fifteen pieces in the collection can be worn multiple ways, adapting from necklaces to brooches, from earrings to bracelets. This isn’t just practical (though it is); it’s conceptual, reflecting the collection’s eclectic philosophy, in which fixed categories and rigid definitions give way to fluid possibility.
The Watches: Haute Horlogerie Meets High Jewelry
While the Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection naturally emphasizes jewelry, the watch component deserves attention for pushing boundaries between horlogerie and joaillerie. Three pieces in particular demonstrate Bvlgari’s increasingly sophisticated approach to jewelry watches:
The Notte Stellata Divas’ Dream features a black opal dial that maps Rome’s night sky from 753 BCE—the legendary founding date of the Eternal City. The dial is set with sapphires and diamonds positioned to represent celestial bodies. It’s a 38mm piece, substantial enough for presence without overwhelming the wrist.
The Pavone bracelet watch transforms the peacock into a fluid bracelet of diamonds, rubellites, and emeralds. The watch dial is almost secondary to the artistic composition—timekeeping becomes just one function within a larger jewelry statement.
The Serpenti Dea Secret watch conceals a pavé diamond dial beneath an emerald-adorned snake’s head, with the bracelet coiling around the wrist in Bvlgari’s signature hexagonal Tubogas design. The piece uses the BVL 100 or BVP 100 caliber—miniature mechanical movements that provide full functionality within extremely constrained spaces.
These movements represent a serious watchmaking achievement. Getting mechanical timekeeping into jewelry-scale cases without compromising reliability or power reserve (around 30 hours) requires engineering expertise that few houses possess. The fact that these movements integrate seamlessly into complex jewelry structures demonstrates Bvlgari’s dual mastery.
Eclecticism as Excellence
After decades of high jewelry production, Bvlgari could easily rest on established formulas—Serpenti variations, colored gemstone statements, Roman-inspired designs. That the Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection instead pushes into new territory while remaining unmistakably Bvlgari demonstrates creative confidence and institutional courage.
For collectors, the Bvlgari Eclettica high jewelry collection offers genuine acquisition opportunities at multiple price points, from accessible entry pieces to once-in-a-lifetime Capolavori. For the broader jewelry world, it offers a model of how heritage houses can honor their past while actively shaping their future. And for anyone who believes jewelry can be art, Eclettica provides 160 compelling arguments.
In unveiling Eclettica in Milan, a city where creativity is a living language, Bvlgari has created not just a collection but a manifesto. It declares that high jewelry’s most exciting future lies not in perfecting established categories but in exploding them, in treating centuries of artistic tradition as raw material for contemporary invention, and in believing that the boldest creative risks yield the most enduring rewards.
Featured images: Courtesy of Bvlgari
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