By the time I entered the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan—a city where fashion doesn’t so much speak as it hums with quiet confidence—I knew I wasn’t attending just another high jewelry unveiling. There was a softness in the air that evening, a kind of shimmer that had less to do with candlelight or champagne and more to do with memory. We were there to witness something not merely new, but something sacredly circular: Pomellato returning home.
Pomellato Collezione 1967, the house’s latest high jewelry collection, is not a look forward, nor quite a glance back. It is, rather, a spiral—looping elegantly through time, drawing power from past rebellion and threading it with present clarity. It is Pomellato’s manifesto in gold, in sapphire, in asymmetry and color. A love letter to Milan. An archive unbuttoned.
Pomellato Collezione 1967: Chains That Whisper Revolt
The collection begins, as it must, with the chain. There is a sensuality to chains that Pomellato has long understood, since the late ’60s when Pino Rabolini, the founder of Pomellato, first twisted the conventions of Milanese jewelry. Where others saw constraint, he saw continuity. Where chains once whispered servitude, Pomellato reimagined them as soft-spoken revolutions.
In The Blue Chain Cascade, a 22-carat Ceylon sapphire anchors a cascade of white gold and diamond pavé links. It does not shout; it sings. There is music in the way it catches light, like the clink of a charm bracelet over a handwritten note. Beside it, the Yellow Diamond Moon Parure glows with a solar defiance: a 12-carat fancy yellow diamond orbiting the sculptural roundness of a gourmette chain, each link a moon in its own right. The radical simplicity of form and the extravagance of material are held in exquisite tension, as if the past and present had clasped hands.
It is no coincidence that this chapter of the collection evokes the 1970s. That was the decade when Milan pulsed with industrial edge and women began wearing chains not as decoration but declaration. These pieces honor that shift, rendering the ordinary extraordinary without apology.
The Art of Asymmetry
The second movement of Pomellato Collezione 1967 is where the collection grows wild. Here, Pomellato throws out the rulebook entirely—a return to the freedom of the 1980s, when volume became the message and irregularity the mode of expression.
The Asimmetrico Tanzanite Parure is perhaps the boldest statement in the collection. At its heart, a 55.96-carat tanzanite, asymmetrically cut and set as if it had emerged that way from the earth itself, untouched. I overheard someone at the unveiling call it “disobedient.” I think they meant it as a compliment. It took over 700 hours to complete—and yet, it wears like instinct.
Elsewhere, the Zigzag Supreme Parure challenges the linearity of classic design with white gold structures that dart and twist like bolts of thought. Its deep blue tanzanites (23 and 24 carats, respectively) sparkle not just with brilliance, but with intelligence. And the Rivière Zigzag necklaces—one radiant with green tourmalines, the other with rubellites—seem to flirt with geometry, refusing symmetry but never coherence.
These are not jewels that sit demurely at the neck or wrist. They occupy space, command attention, but with that very Pomellato ease—the sense that you could, and perhaps should, wear them with a crisp white shirt or a vintage tee. There’s a Milanese nonchalance baked into every facet.
A Chromatic Reawakening
The final chapter of Pomellato Collezione 1967 is a chromatic crescendo. Here, Pomellato indulges its well-known love affair with color, perhaps its most distinct signature. It is a palette both grounded and exuberant: tourmalines, rubellites, sapphires, and topazes that do not merely adorn, but speak in the language of Milan’s ever-changing skyline.
It reminds me of mornings in the city: the cold steel grey of the trams, the soft terracotta of quiet courtyards, the sudden brilliance of stained glass filtering into cathedral aisles. There’s an urban spirituality to these stones. They gleam like windows catching the last light of day.
One ring in particular, its topaz as broad and blue as a summer sky over the Navigli, caught my attention—not for its opulence, but for its sincerity. That, I think, is the gift Pomellato offers in Collezione 1967: sincerity disguised as spectacle. Or perhaps, spectacle as sincerity.
Beauty, Meant to Be Worn
What makes Pomellato unique among high jewelry maisons is not just its aesthetic language but its philosophy. As CEO Sabina Belli puts it, “Luxury lives joyfully.” There is joy in these pieces, yes, but also intimacy. They are not locked away behind vitrines or meant for one gala night a year. They are designed to live alongside you—to age, even, as we all do, with charm.
There’s a radical kindness in that idea: that beauty belongs in motion, on the street, at dinner with friends, against skin. It is high jewelry without hauteur. And in this way, Collezione 1967 is also a kind of liberation—of jewels from preciousness, of history from stasis, of women from ornamentation.
A Homecoming in Milan
That night, under the vaulted ceilings of the Brera, as models drifted past like shadows made of gold and sapphire, it struck me: this was not just an unveiling. It was a homecoming. A return to the city where Pomellato first sketched its rebellion in rose gold. And it was a quiet declaration, almost whispered but unmistakably clear: We were always meant to shine this way.
The Pomellato Collezione 1967 does not seek to dazzle through volume or daze with dazzle. It does not chase trends or lean on nostalgia. Instead, it holds time like a jewel in the palm, examines it from all sides, and then, with careful hands, sets it free.
Featured image: Pomellato
Amanda Akalonu is dedicated to weaving together the worlds of jewelry, watches, and objects through a lens of literary storytelling.
