Simply Abu Dhabi Magazine XXIII

1 3 8 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I T he Perlée collection is a failsafe darling of the jewellery world, dating all the way back to 2008. This season, it’s been subject to some remodelling by parent company Van Cleef & Arpels to reassert the rounded aesthetic so close to the Maison’s heart. Now the collection has been fused with another of Van Cleef & Arpels’ signature emblems: the gorgeous Between the Finger Ring, a positive hug for the digits. The distinctive ring has been set in various combinations of colour with a rich, creative use of metals and stones. In one, the pink gold setting of an open ring is topped at each end with carnelian and diamonds respectively. In another, the setting is made of polished yellow gold and set with malachite on one side and peppered diamonds encircled by a border of golden beads at the other. Pendants and ear studs are available to match the feminine and timeless collection. To look at the golden bobbles decorating so many of the pieces belies the workmanship that goes into them. Each of the tiny golden beads is reworked individually prior to setting and patiently polished, a technique that has been used by the house’s craftsmen since the 1920s, once even manifesting in a ‘couscous’ bracelet following a trip to Morocco by the Arpels family. But the Perlée collection – so named for those golden beads – is enormously varied. In many other houses, for example, the Perlée signature bracelet and ring would be a line in its own right, polished bands of gold fringed with rows of gold beads and inscribed with the company name. They, like the Clovers model which adds a clover leaf motif of diamonds to the band, have a distinctly Arabic feel. As well as reinventing the Perlée collection, the design maestros have found time to put together a heavenly haute joaillerie collection too. The theme? Emeralds. The company is justifiably proud of its history of making crowns and jewellery for kings and queens, royals who have included the Iranian Shah, Princess of Egypt, Indian Maharani and the Duchess of Windsor. When summoned to Tehran in the 1960s to select the jewels for the crown and jewellery set commissions, even Pierre Arpels himself was staggered by the riches that lay before him. Hundreds and thousands of emeralds. “I stood in wonder before this treasure,” he later said; “this profusion of precious stones.” V a n C l e e f & A r p e l s