A rare alliance of jewelers and hotels is giving rise to the novel concept of destination-specific jewelry, and there are some enchanting personal stories behind the phenomenon.
After Dutch jeweler Bibi van der Velden spent her honeymoon at Hotel Il Pellicano in the Italian region of Tuscany, she’s returned every year for her anniversary. Her close friendship with owner Marie-Louise Sciò and her father Roberto led her to create a little pelican charm as a gift for her friend, naming it Roberto. The pelican’s beak opens to reveal the bird swallowing one of the sunbathing guests. The family was so amused that it made the 18-karat-gold charm available to guests for purchase.
Annoushka Ducas, meanwhile, used to have tea at Claridge’s in London with her grandmother. In her 20s, long before she launched her Annoushka jewelry brand, she was in the fish business, where she got to know the hotel’s tradesman entrance. Who better, then, to team up with Claridge’s for its Life in 7 Charms series? The charms, which Ducas calls an “18-karat biography,” sell on link bracelets or as pendants.
“Approaching Claridge’s felt like writing a love letter to the hotel,” comments Ducas. “There are so many icons to choose from, and speaking to Kate Hudson, the hotel archivist, opened my eyes to the stories behind them.” The jeweler was particularly drawn to the famous revolving door, inspired by a jousting tent — “a brilliantly eccentric detail,” she says. The charm door spins, too.
Other symbols of the hotel’s Art Deco heritage feature among the charms, like the travel trunk “symbolic of the golden age of travel,” explains Hudson, along with the bellboy teddy, the zebra rocking horse, and the hotel’s hallmark teapot. “Our zebra is very much part of the storytelling and very popular with our guests.”
In fact, she says, the response to the charms “has been overwhelmingly positive since we released the collection [in October]. It seemed to instantly resonate with people.”
Broadening horizons
Jewelry lets hotels connect with their clients by offering a palpable link to the destination, which guests can buy and take away. From the jeweler’s perspective, it’s an excellent marketing opportunity. As Ducas points out, guests come from all over the globe, “so of course, it’s an exciting way to share what we do with a new audience. But at its heart, the collaboration is about storytelling, sentiment and creating something that will outlive the moment.”
The concept of exclusive destination-specific jewelry designs is relatively new, but it does offer opportunities for special collaborations. For example, Carolina Bucci has opened two outposts at Soneva Jani and Soneva Secret in the Maldives, for which she designed exclusive pieces that resonate with the surroundings, featuring her colorful signature Forte beads. The ideas grew organically, says Bucci, but “you cannot design for a place without having spent time there and breathed the air.”
In another exclusive joint effort — this one with the pink Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida — Bucci describes how the collection’s pink hues “defined themselves naturally. But what is extra special is the unique monkey charm on the limited-edition Lucky bracelet, inspired by Palm Beach’s [monkey] mascot, Charlie Brown.”
Bucci’s advice to jewelers considering a collaboration is to make it personal — to choose “somewhere you feel you have a natural connection to.”
The Eden Rock hotel in Saint Barthélemy enlisted Greek jewelry brand Ysso to create a capsule collection of five sculpted demi-fine pieces featuring flowers indigenous to the Caribbean island, including frangipani and hibiscus. It also made hibiscus pendants for resort staff to wear. While the items are part of a special-edition collection, they are not exclusive to retail at the hotel; they are also available on Ysso’s website and Net-a-Porter. Ysso founder Alexia Karides views the jewelry as “a memory one can wear — a quiet, enduring marker of a place, time or feeling.”
Bejeweled beasts
Mexican jeweler Daniela Villegas shares similar values with the Marbella Club in Spain, for which she created a talismanic menagerie of jeweled beasts to connect with the biodiversity and landscapes of the estate — as well as with its founder, Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe, who lived in Mexico. There are vibrantly colored gem-set manta ray rings, little bugs, caterpillars, a flamboyant bird of paradise ring, and a bulbous lizard that perches on the wrist. Alongside the special-edition pieces, Villegas organizes jewelry workshops to give some hands-on artistic experience to children in the hotel’s Kids Club, allowing them to share the joy of making jewelry.
“Hospitality has experienced such an evolution in how personalized it has become,” comments van der Velden. Aside from making the Il Pellicano charm, van der Velden is also jeweler in residence at the new Rosewood Hotel in Amsterdam, where among other things, she has created sculpted art installations and runs fun events. The aim is to pull guests into her fantasy of sculpture and jewelry. Vacations hold special memories, as does jewelry, she says, “so I see these two things as very connected. ‘Souvenir’ is the wrong word, but a jeweled memento that reminds them of that moment.”
Image: Claridge’s x Annoushka Life in Charms collection. (Annoushka)
