Bvlgari’s Jewellery Creative Director Lucia Silvestri has delivered what may be the most fully realised expression of the Maison’s identity to date. Here she opens up about her love of listening to stones and why true luxury should never chase a trend.

There are many things that are undeniable about Lucia Silvestri, Bvlgari’s Jewellery Creative Director. She is refined, she has that undeniable Italian flare, and she knows precious gems like the back of her hand. As someone who has been with the Maison for over 45 years Silvestri has a particular kind of authority that comes with time. And a wisdom that can only be achieved by having held more extraordinary stones than most people will ever see in a lifetime. With Eclettica, the Maison’s new high jewellery collection, she has channelled that accumulated knowledge and profound instinct into something that feels both entirely new and unmistakably Bvlgari.

The word eclecticism, she says, is at the core of how she understands the company she creates for. Not as aesthetic restlessness, but as something more considered: the creation of harmony out of diversity. “Eclecticism has always been at the heart of how I define Bvlgari,” she affirms. “It is not just about mixing different elements — it is about creating harmony out of diversity. A creative language where inspirations from different eras, places, and artistic expressions come together naturally.”

In Eclettica, that language reaches what she describes as its most complete and authentic expression, drawing on painting, sculpture, and architecture as equal creative partners. Painting informs the chromatic boldness, the way gemstones function as precious strokes of colour in vibrant, unexpected combinations. Sculpture gives the pieces their three-dimensional presence — volume, shadow, the sense that each creation exists fully in space. And finally architecture gives the collection its underlying logic. Its rhythm, balance, proportion,and the invisible structure that keeps the vibrant wild energy of Silvestri’s ideas from spilling over into marvelous chaos.

At the heart of the collection are nine pieces Bvlgari calls the Capolavori — the Italian word for masterpieces, and a title that in this context is not hyperbole. These are the pinnacle of what Silvestri and the Maison’s artisans have attempted: gemstones of the highest caliber married to creative audacity, technical perfection as the vehicle for artistic vision. The collection also introduces what Bvlgari calls “artsmanship” — a concept coined to describe exactly this fusion, the point at which artistic intuition and visionary mastery become indistinguishable from one another. “The introduction of concepts like ‘Artsmanship’ reflects a deeper integration between artistic vision and craftsmanship,” Silvestri confirms. “It is a collection that feels very complete and very true to who we are.”

It is when she speaks about the stones themselves, though, that Silvestri is always the most animated — and most revealing about how she actually works. She famously does not design around gemstones so much as she listens to them, allowing each stone to direct her hand. It is a process that sounds intuitive but is grounded in decades of looking, touching, and understanding exactly what any given gem can and cannot do. “Each stone has its own personality, and I always listen to what it suggests,” she says. “This time, they spoke about boldness, colour, and freedom. The gemstones in Eclettica invited us to be daring, to explore unexpected combinations, and to push creativity further. At the same time, they required respect and balance, guiding us toward harmonious compositions. It is always a dialogue between the stone and the design, and in this collection, that dialogue felt particularly vibrant and expressive.”

One of the collection’s most talked-about pieces, the Secret Garden necklace, centres on a padparadscha sapphire — one of the rarest gemstones in the world, prized for its elusive balance of pink and orange hues — that Silvestri describes as love at first sight. “I remember seeing it in natural light and being completely mesmerised by its perfect balance of pink and orange,” she recalls. “Every stone is different, and each one creates a unique emotion. That is what makes my work so special: there is always a new story, a new feeling to discover.”

Eclettica also includes fifteen transformable pieces — the highest number Bvlgari has ever presented in a single collection — and among them the Seres Scarf necklace, a construction of more than a thousand individual components that moves and drapes with the fluid ease of fabric. It is the kind of piece that sounds technically impossible until you understand the level of obsessive precision that Bvlgari’s artisans bring to such tests of imagination. “It is an incredible challenge,” Silvestri says as someone who has spent years dreaming up  the impossible, “because you are essentially trying to recreate the softness of fabric using only precious materials. Achieving this harmony between technical precision and fluidity is what makes high jewellery so fascinating. When it works, the piece comes to life and moves with the body in a very natural way.”

The question of timelessness comes up, as it always does in conversations about high jewellery, and Silvestri’s answer is as definitive as you would expect from someone who has spent her career thinking about it. True luxury, she believes, simply does not follow trends. The goal is never to chase what is new for its own sake. “We aim to create pieces that will remain relevant and desirable for generations,” she shares. “In that sense, innovation and timelessness coexist, but always with a sense of balance and harmony.”

It is an equilibrium she describes in almost every context — between geometry and freedom, between rigor and creativity, between the discipline that great craftsmanship demands and the audacity that great art requires. “When they are in perfect equilibrium, the result feels effortless and elegant,” she says. “That is what we always strive for at Bvlgari — creating pieces where complexity and simplicity, rigor and freedom, come together in perfect harmony.”

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Images: Supplied & Feature Image: Supplied