Cover Pomellato Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire exhibition entrance (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
Pomellato Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire exhibition entrance (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
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In Paris for Pomellato’s first exhibition and the unveiling of Stile Libero, its new high jewellery collection, Tatler finds a maison—and a city—that treat freedom as a discipline
My Pomellato Paris experience began at the Bourse de Commerce, a domed rotunda filled with contemporary art, including pieces from the Pinault Collection, the private collection of Kering founder François Pinault. There was no jewellery on the first day at all, only gallery visits, then a hearty welcome dinner in a local restaurant. The maison was giving me time to acclimatise to Paris—its luxuries, its art, its freedom—and take my foot off the accelerator of Hong Kong-style velocity.
I had come to write about a high jewellery collection, yet Pomellato seemed in no hurry to show it to me. The following evening, minutes before the gala dinner and exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Pomellato draped me in its jewellery: Nudo, the faceted, collar-free stones the maison made its signature, worn as a ring, earrings and a pendant at the throat.
Pomellato, Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire is the brand’s first exhibition in Paris. Curated by Alba Cappellieri, head of jewellery design at technology institute Politecnico di Milano, it relays the house’s history as a series of revolutions—the areas in which Pomellato broke with jewellery convention: style, craftsmanship, colour, image and, most of all, the celebration of women.
Above Creative director Vincenzo Castaldo (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
Creative director Vincenzo Castaldo (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
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Creative director Vincenzo Castaldo, whom I interviewed by email around the time of the opening, said, “That independence isn’t a strategy we [recently] adopted—it is in the DNA of the house from its very beginning in Milan in 1967,” adding that Pomellato “grew up deliberately apart from the prestige codes of traditional jewellery, and that distance is precisely what gives us our voice.” Even the name carries it: pomellato is the Italian word for a horse with a rare, dappled coat, which has long been seen as the sign of a horse in peak condition—glossy, healthy and admired in the ring. The brand’s founder, Pino Rabolini, was advised by his father to “bet on the winning horse”, so he made this strong, distinctive, elegant animal his emblem.
The Paris show is divided into a series of rooms, one per revolution. The first belongs to photography. By its own account, Pomellato was the first jewellery house to entrust its campaigns to master photographers, a move that reshaped how a woman could be portrayed. Those choices hang here as towering black-and-white portraits: Gian Paolo Barbieri’s Seventies sensuality; Helmut Newton’s Eighties campaigns that cast women as assertive protagonists, the jewels worn like declarations of power; and the Nineties visions of Albert Watson, Javier Vallhonrat, Horst P Horst, Lord Snowdon and Michel Comte. Shown here for the first time are images by Herb Ritts, whose sculptural chiaroscuro translates polished gold as skin, shadow and light. In every frame, the woman is the subject and the jewellery she wears speaks for her.
Above Inside the Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire exhibition (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
Inside the Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire exhibition (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
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Craftsmanship comes next, with a spotlight on the chain: a functional object Pomellato took and made into a signature. Its heritage links—the flat, interlaced Gourmette and the beaded Boule—led to later chain collections such as Catene and Iconica, each shaped by hand until the gold lies soft and supple against the skin. Behind such pieces lies a working method the house calls ars combinatoria—the art of breaking its own signatures down and putting them back together in new ways. Castaldo says the brand “expresses itself through decomposing and recomposing”, drawing on the simplest elements “that belong to our DNA”.
Another revolution is shape: Pomellato favours bold, sculptural forms made to be handled, from the Seventies Gemelle necklaces to the recent Pentagoni. The boldest innovation of all is colour. Pomellato built its reputation on a “free gems” philosophy, refusing the old hierarchy that ranks a handful of precious stones above all others, instead choosing gems for their colour, character and emotional charge—raising the likes of tourmalines, garnets and spinels to a standing once reserved for diamonds and rubies. It is this conviction that produced Nudo and that drives the house still: the point, Castaldo says, is “refusing the idea that beauty must follow a fixed order of value”.
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Above Visionary Colors Mandala Chromia necklace (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
Visionary Colors Mandala Chromia necklace (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
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Underpinning every one of these breaks with tradition is Pomellato for Women, the advocacy platform launched in 2017 for the house’s 50th anniversary; the brand frames each revolution as an assertion of female independence, and this platform is its clearest expression. Its work against gender-based violence gives the exhibition’s talk of freedom a weight well beyond the aesthetic look of the jewellery.
As we arrived at the final section of the exhibition, the past gave way to the present, and the Pomellato Stile Libero high jewellery collection was unveiled: 65 creations across three chapters—Visionary Colours, Magnetic Gold and Hypnotic Shadows, each a different reading of the same founding idea of freedom. For Castaldo, this isn’t a free-for-all. “This freedom is only possible when it goes hand in hand with the conscious ability to manage it,” he says; the confidence he prizes is the discipline of “knowing exactly how far you can dare”—how far to push against the house’s own rules before the balance tips.
Visionary Colours, the collection’s colour chapter, is the frankest display of the house’s nerve, and where serti libre—the setting technique that places stones in loose, seemingly random arrangements— reaches full expression, the gems scattered in irregular patterns that still settle into balance. “I give the atelier a feeling and a direction,” Castaldo says of the process, which allows the artisan to find what Castaldo calls “controlled spontaneity ... a freedom that is guided, never random”.
The collection’s boldest statement, Mandala Chromia, is a one-off gold medallion necklace in which 99 natural multicoloured sapphires—pink, violet, yellow, blue, orange and green—are framed by brown diamonds. Castaldo describes it as “pure emotion in colour”, the stones chosen “for the chord they strike together”. Drops of Paraíba, a semi- rigid choker, threads together 21 pear-shaped Paraíba tourmalines, all deliberately unalike in size and shade, totalling 20.15 carats. Uniformity, he says, is “the signature of a machine”, whereas “difference is the fingerprint of nature; it is where the life of the piece actually resides.” The Rivière necklace Rainbow Supreme sends 68 tourmalines and more than 157 carats into a continuous dégradé, held in check by a heritage gourmette detail—maximalism, in Castaldo’s words, “only works when something keeps it grounded”.
Above Magnetic Gold Attache necklace (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
Magnetic Gold Attache necklace (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
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Magnetic Gold flips the brown diamonds that Pomellato introduced in 2003 into an act of nonconformity. “In 2003, we chose character over convention,” Castaldo says, “and that conviction still drives Pomellato.” The diamonds anchor pieces like Attache, a necklace drawn from a Nineties archive chain that can be worn three ways— proof, for him, that the archive is “a conversation between past and present”.
In Hypnotic Shadows, French master artisan Sara Bran’s Arabesque necklace, hand-pierced over the course of 1,450 hours, produces gold that is as fine as lace yet solid enough to wear; beside it, the Ipnotica rings render the same openwork as flowing, interlocking gold shapes, one version setting white diamonds against black titanium. Bran’s task was to keep extreme technique wearable—“the calibration is the art”, Castaldo says. Handing a centuries-old craft to a contemporary eye carries the risk of limiting creativity: “Nostalgia is the real danger,” he says, adding that heritage “has to speak in the present tense”.
Above Hypnotic Shadows Arabesque bracelets (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
Hypnotic Shadows Arabesque bracelets (Photo: courtesy of Pomellato)
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One conviction underlies everything Pomellato does and believes: high jewellery “is not a monument locked away; it is style embodied through volume, designed for a woman who is the protagonist of her own life,” Castaldo says. The Nudo I wore and the Stile Libero pieces share that lineage: the belief that a jewel is worn and lived in; that colour is an emotion before it is a value. The creative director describes the collection’s narrative as “circular—it could just as easily be read starting from the end”, and by the end of the night, I saw why. It begins with a woman in one of the photographs and ends with the woman who might wear these stones tomorrow—a woman Castaldo describes as “free, strong, intellectual and [an] authentic protagonist of her own style”.
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As the Regional Editor for Watches and Jewellery and Editorial Content Lead for Tatler GMT, Amrita Katara specialises in luxury watch and jewellery coverage across Asia, with expertise in editorial strategy, feature writing and interviews with industry leaders. Her past roles span luxury lifestyle media and client partnerships. Based in Mumbai, Amrita’s work bridges global trends and Asian market insights.
