"I LOVE GOLD." The words that Francesca Amfitheatrof uses to describe the initial impulse of her work could sound almost banal if anyone else said them. And yet, in the mouth of this creator, they become the key to understanding a form to interact with the precious materials that have shaped an atypical professional career, halfway between goldsmithing and contemporary art. In the last 25 years, this designer has curated exhibitions, exhibited in galleries, created her own brand and obtained, in 2018, an unprecedented position in the industry: creative director of jewelry and watches at Louis Vuitton, the brand born in the 19th century that has best defined the luxury of the 21st.
Amfitheatrof attends us through a screen from New York.
She has lived there with her family since 2014, when she joined her previous position as Creative Director of Tiffany & Co. But her life journey is influenced by different cultures and places.
He was born in Tokyo in 1968, into a family marked by the hallmark of modernity, with a journalist father and a publicist mother, he Russian and she Italian.
He was educated in an English boarding school, but his childhood was also spent in Italy, Russia and the United States.
And fate would have her university training surprise her in one of the cultural crucibles of the late 20th century.
"I was very lucky to study in London in the 1990s," he reflects.
“It was the time when you went from Thatcher to Blair, when creativity stopped being a loser.
I experienced the absolute joy of living at a time when everything was buzzing, and I understood that changing culture is the most exciting and the most difficult thing in the world.
From the outside, it just seems like a time when music, art and fashion were amazing, but what I know is that from the inside it was all about working together and supporting each other. "
Oliver Hadlee Pearch white and yellow gold rings
In that boiling city, Amfitheatrof was hardened in the trinity of British creative training: Chelsea College of Arts, Central Saint Martins and Royal College of Art. Those pioneering schools approached design from theater, performance, contemporary art, deconstruction or counterculture.
A splendid quarry in which designers such as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Gareth Pugh, Hussein Chalayan or Miguel Adrover were forged, and which has left a suggestive mark on Amfitheatrof.
"I am the result of that education, which consists of being clear that the idea rules," he acknowledges.
"The key is to design everything you can, and in the most creative way possible."
This approach serves only to understand half of the formula for your success.
The other half was, in a world that tended towards the evanescence of the conceptual, opting for a tangible material - metal - and for a sector, jewelry, strongly conservative and masculine.
While many of her fellow generations defined themselves as "creators" or "artists," Amfitheatrof proudly claimed the title of artisan.
"I have always defined myself as a goldsmith, because what interested me was creating my own metals, my own gold," he explains.
“It is knowledge that gives a lot of depth to my work.
The first thing is the materials ”.
In an age when many renowned designers cannot sew, it is surprising to find that Amfitheatrof started out by creating her own gold alloys and working the metal herself at the jeweler's bench.
A physically and technically demanding job that has to do with your personal understanding of the trade.
"I love the metal, the material itself," he says.
“It goes from liquid to solid, it is versatile and it fascinates me that something as small as a jewel can have such incredible power.
It is part of the body, of the skeleton, like an extra bone ”.
She uses a very graphic metaphor: “When I was pregnant I thought 'today I was making an elbow', and another day, 'now I'm making a nose'.
And making jewelry is something like that, it's adding something to your body ”.
His anatomical, visceral and almost alchemical way of describing his jewelery vocation is not far from the poetic and lyrically violent language of the Young British Artists.
In fact, her first collection of jewelry and silver objects, in 1993, was not presented in a store to use, but in White Cube, the London gallery that launched the career of Damien Hirst, the Chapman brothers or Tracey Emin.
Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani were among the first buyers of those pieces created by hand by the designer herself.
The model wears earrings, rings and bracelets from the LV Volt collection.
Amfitheatrof links her style to her status as a global citizen.
"I grew up in Italy, and Italians love jewelry," she says.
“I was born in Japan, and I have a sense of purity and simplicity that has to do with minimalism.
I'm not baroque or overly decorative ”.
His pieces boast of formal precision, but they do not renounce expressiveness.
They are like little sculptures.
"I am a three-dimensional designer, not a cartoonist," she declares.
“When I see an object, I always imagine what its back is like.
I see it from all sides, and also from within ”.
This double vision has led to a hybrid trajectory.
She has designed enigmatic pieces of steel and brass for Alessi, has curated exhibitions at institutions such as the Gucci Museum, has worked as a contemporary art consultant and has held various creative responsibilities in companies such as British jewelry Asprey & Garrard or Wedgewood porcelain and kitchenware. .
After occupying the creative direction of Tiffany & Co. between 2014 and 2018, his restless talent has found a natural place in a company, Louis Vuitton, which in recent years has reinforced its creative team with prestigious authors in the different fields in which Opera.
Amfitheatrof shares an organizational chart with the French Nicolas Ghesquière and the American Virgil Abloh in women's and men's fashion, respectively, and Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud in perfumery.
"When Louis Vuitton wants to do something they take it very seriously," he says.
“What strikes me is that it is a very daytime brand, very graphic.
I like the idea of buying jewelry just like you buy clothes.
Not because you want to celebrate something, but because you like the energy of the brand.
There is a different psychology, it is something light, fun and that breaks the rules ”, he sums up.
LV Volt Curb Chain bracelets in two sizes.
His new project for the house is a collection of bracelets, rings and necklaces that claims the material alphabet of classic jewelry: gold (white and yellow) and diamonds.
The name of the collection, LV Volt, refers to the volt - "sound, music, feelings, electricity", Amfitheatrof lists - and reinterprets the most important emblem of the house.
The Louis Vuitton monogram, created in 1896, is one of the first modern logos, a tribute by Georges Vuitton to his father, Louis, who died shortly before.
Perfected in 1965 by Gaston-Louis Vuitton, the man responsible for introducing the brand into contemporary imagination, the monogram became the symbol of the new luxury when the firm was relaunched in 1989 by its current owner, Bernard Arnault, who acquired the LVMH conglomerate. , founded two years earlier.
LV Volt One bracelet in yellow gold and diamonds.
“What motivated me was to make a collection based on the initials of the house that invented the logo, approaching them from a Bauhaus mentality, reducing them to the essential”, says Amfitheatrof.
The collection, potentially
unisex
- in this way it is close to the revolution that Virgil Abloh has introduced in the men's ready-to-wear of the house -, declines these initials using different strategies.
“The letters are gently curved, or split in half.
Each piece is treated in a different way, because the light falls differently depending on each detail ”.
Diamonds, for example, are always inserted in the V, "because there is the most precious thing, the surname that has been passed down from generation to generation."
The typeface is rotated to fit the natural movement of the bracelets, and is woven into hypnotic meshes.
“Our CEO loves big ideas.
I have quite complete freedom, I work on a design and present an idea when I have it finished ”.
The team of 12 creators led by Amfitheatrof is spread over different countries.
"I do not design with an ideal client in mind, because I know that sensitivities change very quickly and that there is a shared global culture."
For her, jewelry becomes a conducive territory to address current transformations.
"Sustainability implies thinking in the long term, and jewelry is precisely about that," he points out.
Her work also helps her to talk about feminism and the transformation of gender roles, crucial in the discourse of a designer who has made her way into a sector whose audience is mainly female, but whose architects are still mostly men.
This is why, for example, Amfitheatrof vindicates the transgressive and sculptural legacy of the jewelery designers of post-war Paris and proclaims that anyone can wear their creations.
“They are open pieces, each person can freely give the meaning they want to the jewel they choose.
Without narrow-mindedness.
Without judgment".
