Before Mary Katrantzou, there was no such thing as a creative director of leather goods and accessories at Bvlgari. In fact, the role was invented for her, after several successful collaborations between the Greece-born, London-based independent designer and the 142-year-old Roman jeweler. This happened while Katrantzou was helming her own eponymous brand (a practice she still maintains) known for its colorful and maximalist textile designs. It’s at this point in the recitation of her bio that she politely interrupts: “I think of myself more as a purist than a maximalist,” she notes. “I came into fashion via architecture, and later via textile design. When I first launched my brand, working with prints meant creating a visual language that allows you to make thematic connections.”
While it’s an independent designer’s task to craft a world that resonates culturally and with clients, that relationship at Bvlgari already runs generations deep. “All brands talk about narrative,” says Katrantzou, “But in this case, the depth of narrative has allowed our symbols to evolve into icons over decades.” Rather, the challenge for Katrantzou was to find fresh ways to reach into the house’s rich archive and breathe new life into an enduring lexicon. “It really is an honor to add to, let’s say, the evolution of Bvlgari,” she says of her focus on building the next generation of the brand’s jewelry and leather goods lineage. “A lot of creative directors don’t get the opportunity to do what I do.”
For Katrantzou, that opportunity comes with a very specific purpose: to bridge the worlds of jewelry and bags in unexpected ways—“to offer a new functionality,” as she puts it. Enter the new Icons Minaudière Collection: a constellation of 10 bags (five styles, two sizes) designed by Katrantzou. Each bag design reimagines one of Bvlgari’s timeless symbols: Monete, Serpenti, Tubogas, Divas’ Dream, and Bvlgari Bvlgari. The resulting pieces feel imbued with generations of meticulous craftsmanship and care, a quality that requires some degree of utilitarian sacrifice: None of the Minaudières will fit a cellphone.
“It’s not like I set out and I said, ‘Let’s be cool. It’s all about carrying culture—no phones,’” she says, laughing. Instead, the design process involved a careful study of each piece’s original referent—and endless rounds of prototyping the scaled-up pieces in resin. “I started to realize that, because each symbol is not shaped like a classical clutch, there’s a limit to preserving the connection to the original jewelry while also making sure the bag feels elevated,” Katrantzou adds.
Elevated, indeed. Each Minaudière is crafted using the same painstaking techniques as its jewelry counterparts, to dazzling effect: The Serpenti, based on an original Misteriosi watch from 1968, features hand-enameled scales and beveled eyes. Divas’ Dream features a symphony of semiprecious stones that mirror the color palette of the jewelry original, including malachite, amethyst, and mother-of-pearl. The Monete takes its inspiration from an ancient Roman coin featuring the relief of an empress—the same one that Bvlgari’s jewelry team uses for all its prototypes.
Katrantzou found the inspiration for the mesmerizing Tubogas design when she stumbled across an archival image of the house’s signature Tubogas watch wrapped around an egg—an allusion to the Orphic egg in Greek mythology, which symbolizes the beginning of time. (The piece, which is wrapped in lizard, is the only Minaudière to be accented in exotic leather.) Last but not least, Bvlgari Bvlgari—which springs directly from the Bvlgari Bvlgari watch—features an intarsia of three shades of mother-of-pearl so seamless that one can hardly believe it was done by hand. “When they stand together, you appreciate the depth of the different techniques demonstrated in each one,” observes Katrantzou.
This spring, Bvlgari celebrated the launch of the collection with an ambitious campaign shot by Ethan James Green that put these five symbols into the hands of celebrated figures—Isabella Rossellini, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Linda Evangelista, Sumayya Vally, and Kim Ji-won—to parse the myriad ways that women pass culture and wisdom from generation to generation. For the campaign, the five women contributed a small book—designed to fit the Minaudière like a hand in a glove—detailing their personal meditations on art-making and cultural heritage.
It’s a tall order for a small bag, especially one so precious that many people might be afraid to carry it out into the world. Here, Katrantzou makes one last polite interruption: “Of course it’s a treasure—you want it to stand the test of time, pass it on to another generation. But that doesn’t mean not to enjoy it.” She pauses, animated. “I want our clients to talk about them, to be excited to show people the little micro book inside. I want these pieces to live.”
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