Bvlgari has ventured into uncharted territory with the launch of the Bvlgari Icons Minaudière Collection, marking the Roman high jeweler’s first-ever foray into minaudière design. Titled “Carrying Culture,” this groundbreaking collection sits at the intersection of high jewelry and luxury accessories, transforming the practical evening clutch into a cultural object imbued with as much meaning as beauty. Under the creative direction of Mary Katrantzou, Bvlgari’s Bags and Accessories Creative Director, the collection doesn’t simply create functional bags—it reimagines what we carry and why we carry it.
The Bvlgari Icons Minaudière Collection represents a radical departure from conventional accessory design. Rather than focusing on functionality alone, each piece proposes a more conceptual idea of luxury. The minaudières are intentionally compact. They are designed not to carry everyday essentials like phones, keys, and wallets, but to carry something far more intangible: ideas, values, stories, and cultural memory. This philosophical approach elevates the minaudière from practical accessory to sculptural objet d’art, blurring the line between jewelry and handbag in a way only Bvlgari, with its 140-year heritage as a Roman jeweler, could achieve.
Five Icons, Five Cultural Statements
The Bvlgari Icons Minaudière Collection pays tribute to five enduring symbols from Bvlgari’s heritage, each representing a different facet of the house’s creative DNA. These aren’t arbitrary selections. Each icon has been central to Bvlgari’s identity for decades, embodying specific values and aesthetic principles that have made the Roman jeweler one of the world’s most distinctive luxury houses.
Monete draws inspiration from ancient Roman coins, those circular artifacts that carried the faces of emperors and the symbols of empire across the ancient world. The Monete minaudière features a metal body combined with enamel and gemstone settings, creating visual and tactile weight that evokes historical memory. Ancient coins weren’t merely currency. They were propaganda, art, and cultural statements cast in precious metal. The Monete minaudière honors this legacy, transforming numismatic inspiration into wearable sculpture.
Serpenti continues Bvlgari’s most iconic motif, the serpent that has slithered through the house’s collections since the 1940s. The snake-shaped lines outline the minaudière’s body, with gemstone-set eyes that symbolize power and transformation. In mythology and culture worldwide, the serpent represents wisdom, renewal, and the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. Bvlgari’s serpent is specifically Roman in character—sensual, bold, unapologetically luxurious.
Tubogas references Bvlgari’s signature goldsmithing technique, named after the flexible gas pipes it resembles. The metal structure and egg-shaped proportions echo the brand’s classic goldwork language, creating a balance between strength and flexibility, rigidity and suppleness. Tubogas represents technical mastery—the ability to make rigid metal behave like fabric, to engineer flexibility without sacrificing form.
Divas’ Dream takes inspiration from the mosaic floors of Rome’s Baths of Caracalla, where intricate geometric patterns created through colored stone have survived nearly two millennia. Through colored gemstones and geometric arrangement, the Divas’ Dream minaudière displays elegant, rhythmic, feminine charm. The fan-shaped motif that defines this collection has become synonymous with a certain kind of Roman sophistication that’s bold yet refined, geometric yet sensual.
Bvlgari Bvlgari showcases the double logo that has become the house’s most recognizable signature. The cylindrical form and mother-of-pearl details bring out modernity and identity symbolism, responding to the brand’s iconic double inscription design spirit. This is Bvlgari at its most confident—a house secure enough in its identity to make its own name the primary design element.
Each minaudière in the Bvlgari Icons Minaudière Collection comes with a refined chain strap and features cabochon-cut gemstones at the clasp, connecting brand heritage with practical functionality while adding luxurious detail.
A Campaign Celebrating Female Cultural Influence
The Bvlgari Icons Minaudière Collection campaign brings the “Carrying Culture” philosophy to life through five women whose work has helped shape contemporary culture across disciplines. This isn’t celebrity endorsement for its own sake. Each woman was chosen because her life’s work embodies the specific values associated with her corresponding icon.
Isabella Rossellini, the Oscar-nominated actor, daughter of cinema legends Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, represents artistic legacy and the transmission of cultural knowledge across generations. Her decades-long career spans film, fashion, and environmental activism, making her the perfect embodiment of culture carried forward through time.
Linda Evangelista, one of the original supermodels who defined 1990s fashion, represents transformation and the power of image. Her ability to shape-shift through photography, to become different personas while maintaining her essential identity, mirrors the serpent’s symbolism of metamorphosis and renewal.
Kim Ji-won, the Korean actress and Bvlgari brand ambassador, brings an international perspective and the elegance of restraint. Her understated yet powerful screen presence demonstrates how strength need not announce itself loudly—a very Bvlgari sensibility.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the acclaimed Nigerian author whose novels and essays have reshaped contemporary literature, represents intellectual power and storytelling as cultural preservation. Her work explores identity, memory, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. These are themes deeply aligned with the collection’s conceptual framework.
Sumayya Vally, the South African architect and founder of Counterspace, embodies spatial thinking and the ways physical structures shape human experience. At just 31, she became the youngest architect to design the Serpentine Pavilion in London, bringing a fresh perspective to how we inhabit and move through space.
Critically, each woman authored a bespoke miniature book designed to fit inside her corresponding minaudière, reinforcing the idea that culture itself can be carried. These aren’t promotional materials. They’re genuine creative contributions that explore the themes and values associated with each icon. In doing so, Bvlgari reframes the accessory as a vessel for knowledge and lived experience, celebrating women as custodians of culture and storytellers of legacy.
Mary Katrantzou’s Vision: From Prints to Precious Metal
The appointment of Mary Katrantzou as Bvlgari’s Bags and Accessories Creative Director brought a distinctive sensibility to the house. Known for her work in fashion, where she built her reputation on intricate digital prints and architectural silhouettes, Katrantzou brings a conceptual approach to accessories design that aligns perfectly with Bvlgari’s heritage as a jeweler first and bag maker second.
Katrantzou’s background in print design translates beautifully to the three-dimensional challenges of the Bvlgari Icons Minaudière Collection. Just as her fashion prints often referenced art history, classical architecture, and decorative arts, the minaudières reference Bvlgari’s archival motifs while transforming them into new contexts. Her ability to balance maximal decoration with clean silhouettes, a hallmark of her fashion work, appears throughout the collection, where rich ornamentation sits within disciplined geometric forms.
“The minaudières are intentionally compact, designed not to carry everyday essentials, but to carry ideas, values, and stories,” Katrantzou explains of her approach. This conceptual framework elevates the collection beyond typical luxury accessories, positioning these pieces as philosophical statements about what we choose to carry—both literally and metaphorically—as we move through the world.
Craftsmanship: Where Jewelry Techniques Meet Accessory Design
Creating the Bvlgari Icons Minaudière Collection required applying Bvlgari’s jewelry-making expertise to accessory construction. This isn’t simply about setting gemstones on metal. It’s about engineering three-dimensional objects that function as both jewelry and bags, that must be beautiful from every angle while remaining structurally sound and practically usable.
The metal bodies of each minaudière are sculpted and finished with the same attention to detail Bvlgari applies to high jewelry. Surfaces receive multiple finishes, polished to mirror brightness in some areas, given satin or brushed textures in others, creating visual interest through the interplay of light and shadow. The enamel work, particularly evident in the Monete design, requires the same centuries-old techniques used in Bvlgari’s jewelry, where colored glass paste is fired onto metal at high temperatures, then polished to achieve smooth, luminous surfaces.
Gemstone setting throughout the collection meets high jewelry standards. The cabochon-cut stones at each clasp, the gem-set serpent eyes, and the colored stones arranged in the Divas’ Dream geometric patterns are all set by hand using traditional techniques. This ensures stones sit securely while maximizing their visual impact, with settings designed to be invisible, allowing the gems themselves to dominate.
The engineering challenges shouldn’t be underestimated. Each minaudière must open and close smoothly, with clasps that are both secure and easy to operate while wearing jewelry or gloves. The chain straps must be sturdy enough to support the metal bodies’ weight while maintaining visual delicacy. Interior construction requires the same attention as exterior. Linings must be luxurious to the touch, and the limited interior space must be thoughtfully organized.
Exclusivity and Availability
The Bvlgari Icons Minaudière Collection will be available at just 11 Bvlgari boutiques worldwide, a deliberately limited distribution that ensures genuine exclusivity. This scarcity reflects both the collection’s positioning as objects d’art rather than mass-market accessories and the production limitations inherent in pieces requiring such intensive hand craftsmanship.
The pricing follows boutique inquiry protocol typical of ultra-luxury accessories, though industry observers expect the minaudières to be positioned at the highest end of Bvlgari’s accessories spectrum, reflecting their jewelry-level craftsmanship and limited availability. These pieces are investments for serious collectors who appreciate the intersection of artistic vision, cultural commentary, and technical mastery.
Featured images: Bvlgari
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