“The Maison is very attached to creation and artistic transmission. We collaborate with artists who express a poetic vision of life, bringing their own sense of creativity,” says Van Cleef & Arpels’ CEO and global president Nicolas Bos, explaining the heritage brand’s embrace of creative partnerships. “We find it interesting to enrich our universe among various artistic fields such as design, architecture or photography.”
Timed with the unveiling of a new Lucky Spring jewellery collection, a recent class of creators Bos welcomed to the Van Cleef & Arpels fold include award-winning French interior designers Kim Haddou and Florent Dufourcq.
The duo set the jeweller’s ladybug-amidst-plum-blossoms collection of a necklace, three bracelets, a brooch and earrings, in frames of nostalgic floral garlands. “When we saw the ladybug, it was love at first sight! She instantly inspired us as a great symbol of lightness, of luck, of wandering and beauty,” they remember, before extolling the joys of springtime. “Paris is never more elegant than during springtime with all the flowers on trees, the birds and the sunlight coming back,” they say. “But to be honest, what we are craving for in spring is mostly ice cream in the Jardin du Palais Royal or on the Seine river banks.”
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To celebrate the launch of Lucky Spring – and the first days of the collection’s namesake annual season – we exchanged emails with Haddou and Dufourcq about their team-up with Van Cleef & Arpels.
Tell us more about your work with Van Cleef & Arpels. How did your drawings take shape? What inspired their motifs?
“We discovered the new collection of Van Cleef & Arpels on a cold and rainy afternoon at the beginning of last winter in Paris. When we saw the ladybug, it was love at first sight! She instantly inspired us as a great symbol of lightness, of luck, of wandering and beauty. Spring is a new start and that is exactly what we needed at this time to escape the grey city. We started a kind of journey with the ladybug as the main companion and we imagined her world, her playground. We wanted her to be surrounded by beauty and that’s why we fantasise about a conversation with an evocative French garden. Something sophisticated and very natural at the same time. Peaceful but full of life. A little gem inside the city just as the ladybug is. Refined, full of colour, of poetry.”
When in your studio, where do you work from? What can you see from your nearest window?
“We are working from our studio in the centre of Paris. We can see a classic French Haussmanian building from our window. Paris is never more elegant than during springtime with all the flowers on trees, the birds and the sunlight coming back. This particular energy is always a really creative moment for us, with new inspirations, new wishes and new perspectives.”
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