Marie Claire Australia September 2017

32 marieclaire.com.au

JEWELLERY CRUSH

CH A NGE

OF SCALE

Bulgari’s iconic Serpenti watch

slips into a sporty new skin

I

n the 1940s Constantino and Mario Bulgari

created the first spiralling Serpenti watch,

which wrapped around the wrist in a series of

gold coils and played with the snake’s symbolic

powers of seduction, strength, and reinvention.

It soon became synonymous with the Italian

fashion house: in 1962 Elizabeth Taylor famously

wore one of the serpent-shaped watches (with a gem-

encrusted head of pavé diamonds and gleaming emerald

eyes) on the set of Cleopatra in Rome, and models from

Marisa Berenson to Veruschka have wrapped themselves

in the brand’s striking gold bracelets and colourful

enamelled scales ever since.

This month marks the debut of Serpenti Skin, a

new collection that uses karung (snakeskin) and calfskin

straps to mimic the double twirl of the original timepiece.

The bands, as well as the buckles, are interchangeable

and come in brilliant colours like carmine red and jungle

green. “The curved contours of the case and bezel are

meant to be less intimidating than Serpentis of the past,

while the straps echo the coils of tubogas, the Italian

gas pipe that inspired our earliest designs,” says Guido

Terreni, managing director of Bulgari Watches.

But the best news? At watch and jewellery show

Baselworld, the brand launched the Serpenti app, which

offers 312 options for designing the timepiece of your

dreams (with choices of 13 straps, a dozen dials, four cases

and personalised engraving). It’s enough to make anyone

who deems the snake something sinister reconsider.

Above right: the original

watch’s coiled shape

nods to Rome’s winding

staircases (as pictured in

the Vatican Museums).

Above: Serpenti Skin

watch in green, $10,850,

and brown, $14,200.

In a Bulgari first, metals

were traded for leather

and snakeskin to craft the

Serpenti’s sinuous strap.

Clockwise from right:

sketches of the new

Serpenti timepiece;

an original diamond-

encrusted design, as

seen on Elizabeth Taylor.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF BVLGARI.

TEXT BY KYLE ANDERSON

FASHION FIRST