We continue focusing on Van Cleef & Arpels due to the New York exhibition!. This magnificent bracelet was designed for Marlene Dietrich in the 1950's recycling rubies and diamonds from several pieces of jewellery belonging to the actress. She wore in the film "Stage Fright", after that she never wore it again but she owned it for the rest of her life. It was sold in auction after her death and it now belongs to a NY private collector.
Van Cleef & Arpels
In 1896 Estelle Arpels, daughter of a precious stone dealer, married Alfred van Cleef, son of an Amsterdam diamond cutter. Ten years later Alfred opened a shop in Place Vendome with his brother in law Charles. Julien and Louis Arpels will soon join them. In 1926, Renee Puisant, daughter of Alfred and Estelle starts her designing career with Rene Sim Lacaze, these would be some of the most creative years of the firm and the beginning of the second generation; in 1930 Van Cleef invented the Minaudiere, a precious metal and stones vanity case for the women of a new era; in 1933 the firm created the Mystery setting and also in this decade the transformable pieces were born as well as the famous zip necklace, suggested by the Duchess of Windsor. 1939 the New York boutique is open. In 1968 the firm launches the famous Alhambra collection.
On 14 May 2011, at 21:37, krb2001@aol.com wrote:
ReplyDelete> Hello,
> I visited your blog and the Van Clef Exhibit in NYC recently. The information in your blog matches that given away in brochure for the exhibit. I plan to contact them though the chance of correction is less than slim with the information already printed. A blog can be more readily made accurate and I hope you will feel the same way. In just a casual check of a few Dietrich books the first photo I found of her wearing the bracelet was dated 1940.
> More importantly, she wore it as a signature piece of her image for the next two decades. The suggestion that she only wore it in STAGEFRIGHT and put it away is nonsense. The book Dietrich Style and Substance has a page of photos of her wearing it to the theatre to see Mary Martin in SOUND OF MUSIC, Judy Garland, and Maria Callas-all in the late 1950's and early 1960's, long after STAGEFRIGHT. She wore it often over a 25 year period and as long it was fashionable to do so. Her daughter Maria Riva in the biography of her mother said she referred to it as her Busby Berkley bracelet because it was "So big and Sparkly." It should not be thought of as a whim in a single film but as important to her as Gloria Swanson's Cartier bracelets or Joan Crawford's star sapphire parure.
Hello
ReplyDeleteEstelle Arpels has never called Estelle, Esther, but she was Jewish and Alfred Van Cleef. The father
Alfred Van Cleef diamond was not any more than that of Esther. Salomon and Salomon Arpels Van Cleef
had married two sisters Mayer of Paris, the daughters of merchant and the two stars became salomon
merchants and linen fabrics. Almost the entire history of the Van Cleef and Arpels told the
century was wrong. I warned Cooper Hewit who did not want to hear and check, etc.
Jean Jacques Richard
Author of Book
"The story of Van Cleef and Arpels"