Starry, dreamy Bulgari night
Let it glow, let it glow: The Serpenti 18k white gold bracelet and watch inlaid with diamonds (left); Serpenti pink gold necklace with pave diamonds and bracelet paired with pink gold earrings with amethysts, peridots, rubellites, and diamonds (center); and Diva’s Dream white gold necklace and earrings with pave diamonds (above) from Bulgari
What more can you possibly give to someone who has everything?
Intimacy, as Bulgari Philippines fashioned with great aplomb at a private dinner to launch its latest high jewelry lines, is a great place to start.
“This isn’t about the who’s who of high society but for those who love Bulgari,” says Bulgari Philippines country manager Mario Katigbak before working the room for catch-ups. He knows everybody in this room by their nicknames and hobbies, and the clients, too, have all become friends among themselves. No press photographs of the guests is the condition that gets the esteemed regulars to say yes, some making the flight from as far as Mindanao. Bring-Your-Own-Bulgari is not the dress code but all attendees have made it a point to show their love, whether for the Roman jeweler’s contemporary take on fine jewelry, its heritage, or as a future heirloom, reciprocated not only by the sparkle each brilliant bauble brings.
And Bulgari loves them back. It’s a love as delectable as the dinner that preceded, as sensual and smooth as the saxophone tunes that accompanied it at Makati Shangri-La’s Rizal Ballroom, transformed into a lush tropical forest overlooked by scarlet parrots and preening cockatoos.
After dessert comes the real treat. The first look is an 18k white gold Serpenti gracing the decollete and coiling the wrist with delicate pavé diamonds and golden scales. The sparkling sinuosity of its tail hypnotizes guests — all chatter is hushed, the room falls into a state of suspended awe. To these women who seem to have it all, this intimacy means room for fantasy, for desire.
“It is a very difficult collection to get because it’s only supposed to be for company-owned stores,” Katigbak describes the one-off pieces spanning across the Serpenti, rebirthed like the eternal renewal of serpentine skin, and the Diva’s Dream collection, inspired by the baths of Caracalla. Some pieces are being presented for the first time in Manila.
“But I had to push it because we need medium- to high jewelry. That’s our market. It’s not entry-level. If it’s the small little things, you cannot excite people,” adds Katigbak
A typically poker-faced, best-dressed regular with avant-garde sensibilities lets out a gasp at the exact moment lapis lazuli and chrysoprase catch light against pavé diamonds in an 18k white gold Divissima Diva necklace.
“Damn, that must be worth a house!” a high profile lawyer reacts to a Divissima Diva’s Dream’s fan-shaped pink gemstone cascade: fan-shaped rubellites, pink tourmalines, amethysts, and pavé diamonds in an 18k pink gold setting
One businessman playfully puts his hands over the eyes of his date as a temptress, an 18k white gold Serpenti necklace with two piercing, pear emerald eyes studded with pavé diamonds slithers past, but his recently re-married ex-wife, seated just behind them, pulls his hands back. Her young husband couldn’t help but laugh.
I’m gushing over a Serpenti 18k white gold collier necklace with full pavé diamonds for its reverence to viperous markings, when one chic executive clutches my arm and exclaims exactly what’s on my mind:“Oh — I will be dreaming about these jewels tonight!”
* * *
Bulgari is located in Greenbelt 4, Rustan’s Tower Shangri-la EDSA, Rustan’s Makati, and The Shoppes at Solaire. Follow @bulgariofficial on Instagram for updates.
