At the end of June last year, the season’s high jewellery launches were in full swing: Dior was in Venice, treating clients to a ballet performance at the Teatro Malibran opera house and dinner under Tintoretto paintings at the 16th-century Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Bulgari, meanwhile, treated some 200 clients to Capri for boat tours, cooking classes and dinner alfresco at the medieval monastery Villa Certosa. Clients rubbed shoulders with Alicia Vikander and Uma Thurman while enjoying a catwalk jewellery show and private concert by Nicole Scherzinger.
One year and a pandemic later, and jewellery houses have moved their big reveals online. The extravagant dinners and showrooms displaying tens of millions of euros of jewels were replaced by atmospheric videos and sleek renderings of dazzling creations. But where the coronavirus has accelerated some very robust digital offerings, it’s also honed in on a more old-fashioned way of selling high jewellery, via intimate, one-to-one appointments and home visits.
Leading the digital charge is Bulgari, whose Barocko high jewellery collection — a bold, exuberant riff on baroque architecture — this year comes courtesy of an invitation-only Barocko app.