From gem-studded timepieces to bookshelf treasures, the maison’s Dédale series shows literature is luxury’s newest playground.
Van Cleef & Arpels has long wrapped its jewelry in fairytale narratives, but its latest project sets those tales on paper. The house has teamed with Italian publisher Franco Maria Ricci to launch Dédale, a slim series of classic texts produced in English, French, and Italian.
The opening trio feels pulled from a collector’s shelf. Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”, Stefan Zweig’s “The Invisible Collection”, and George Sand’s “Laura: A Journey into the Crystal” arrive this summer in linen bound volumes, each stamped with a small golden clover.
Dédale sits under L’ÉCOLE, the brand’s School of Jewelry Arts, and it follows the pace of a runway calendar: one release in spring, another in autumn. Nicolas Bos, who presided over the maison before stepping up to lead Richemont, sees the series as a study in craft, cutting words instead of stones.
Turning to literature suits a house that once translated Romeo and Juliet into necklaces and recently built a high jewelry line on “Treasure Island”. Books offer a slower kind of luxury, one that lingers on a bedside table long after a trunk show fades from the feed.
In placing stories next to sapphires, Van Cleef & Arpels gives readers a new collectible and signals where cultural currency is heading: sometimes the most precious thing glitters in ink, not gold.
