Much like everything else, luxury moves in cycles. You might have observed this yourself. A few short months ago, quiet luxury was all the rage — a fairly mild way to describe the frenzy and ubiquity of a trend that was ironically all about discretion. Social media blew up with influencers accumulating millions of views whilst instructing their followers how to dress according to this symbolically muted aesthetic. Now, if the harbingers of popular culture (otherwise known as Tik Tok videos) are to be believed, quiet luxury is over. In its place, we should expect to see its polar opposite, a strain of luxury that is as exuberant as its predecessor was restrained. A sense of jubilance prevails, and why shouldn’t it? Can you truly call something luxurious if it doesn’t bring you pleasure, liberation, a sense of indulgence?
There is an uncanny prescience in the January launches of Bulgari, which are distinguished by their wholehearted embrace of gold. The Roman jeweller and watchmaker has never been one to hide its voluptuous appreciation of beauty behind a swath of bland beige cashmere. Boldness is celebrated at Bulgari, as is an unspoken, yet commanding, confidence. A Bulgari design doesn’t always seek attention, but it never avoids it. Its historical collections are suffused with this particular blend of self-actualisation and self-assurance. A Bulgari design (or Bulgari wearer) is not daring — because when we say “daring” we often mean transgressive, and there is nothing transgressive about a passion for colour and strong geometries. Maybe you’re not daring. Maybe it’s just that other people are timid.
The highlight of the Bulgari timepieces just launched at LVMH Watch Week is, without doubt, the Bulgari Bulgari, unapologetically resplendent in yellow gold and jet black. This colour pairing is simultaneously timeless and deeply evocative of the 1980s, which sounds paradoxical, but isn’t, really. In fact, it’s perfect, as the combination perfectly represents the essential trait of the Bulgari Bulgari, with its round case and perpendicular flanks punctured by straight lugs. This watch is not afraid of contradictions, and sees no reason to soften the extremity of its black dial to better accommodate the aureate brilliance of polished yellow gold, or vice versa. The watch has a big enough personality to carry this powerful pairing.
Confidence inhabits every aspect of the new yellow-gold Bulgari Bulgari, which houses the time-only cal. BVL191 — no complications needed to justify its fine watchmaking positioning. Its 38mm case diameter bestows classic elegance on the larger wrist, whilst smaller wrists tend to emphasise its architectural lines and proportions. Rather delightfully, a similar black-and-gold model is available in a 26mm-diameter case, with a quartz movement that removes all mechanical pretensions from the watch in order to go all in on the iconic design.
A second pairing of 38mm/26mm Bulgari Bulgari models come in rose gold, with white dials, offering a slightly less startling contrast of colours, but maintaining the same unswerving devotion to the warmer side of the gold spectrum.
The yellow-gold Octo Finissimo was not designed to inhabit anyone’s comfort zone, and it carries out its mission with admirable efficiency. Its bright solar tones and textured azures will feel familiar to anyone who has sojourned on Mediterranean shores, and the continual interplay of light on the sunburst dial, or on the complex facets of the case and bracelet, serve as a pervasive allusion to sybarite pursuits. Ever settled down under a beach umbrella determined to finish your book, only for your eyes to be irresistibly lured away from the page by the glint of sunlight reflecting off a murmuring sea? Be careful where you wear the Octo Finissimo Yellow Gold Automatic. It will have you convinced, in under five minutes, that you shouldn’t spend another second of your life in the office. (It’s right, by the way.)
An evocative counterpoint to this model is found in the Octo Finissimo Tuscan Copper Automatic, which prompts a different (though equally persuasive) kind of yearning. Its steel case and bracelet surround the lustrous copper dial with subtle sheen, like pearlescent dawn skies giving way to a coral glow at the horizon. Its replication of the colour palette of this liminal time is deceptively delicate; according to Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani (Bulgari Product Creation Executive Director), the blushing hues of the dial are a stylistic echo of 16th-century Florentine art at a time when the Renaissance movement was undergoing evolutive transformation in its use of colour saturation and figurative symbolism.
A septet of new Lucea models rounds out the last of the LVMH Watch Week launches from Bulgari. A mix of steel and steel-and-gold watches populate this collection, with one particular bi-colour reference possessing additional intensity thanks to its malachite dial. Instead of using a single disc of malachite, as seen in previous Bulgari watch dials, the 33mm Lucea ref. 103731 has a dial formed out of several malachite fragments assembled via the intarsia technique (similar to marquetry or mosaic, but characterised by the use of irregular tesserae).
In an official statement about these new timepieces, Bulgari CEO Jean-Christopher Babin described the entire fleet of new timepieces as an attempt to “give shape to an emotion” — which we may safely assume amounts to a complex metaphysical exercise with deep conceptual overtones. Using various alloys of gold, decorative techniques, introducing a new dial material (copper), reinforced with layered allusions to art and history, Bulgari have certainly succeeded in shaping our emotional and horological landscape at the opening of 2024.
