Few houses balance preservation and reinvention as gracefully as Bulgari, a maison whose 140-year history has been shaped as much by transformation as by tradition.
The House recently unveiled its first-ever collection of minaudières as a dedicated evening accessories line. Not evening bags in any conventional sense, but conceived as “collector’s pieces” by Mary Katrantzou, creative director of leather goods and accessories. You could say they sit somewhere between jewel and object, ornament and artefact.
Katrantzou, whose design language has long fused architecture with embellishment, approached the project as an exploration of boundaries. “I wanted to explore where a jewel becomes a bag, and where a bag feels like a jewel in your hand,” she tells Elite Traveler. Ceremonial by nature and intimate in scale, the minaudière offered the perfect form through which to investigate that concept.
“This moment felt natural,” Katrantzou says. “Our accessories have reached a level of maturity where we can fully express Bulgari’s symbolic language. Function can step back and meaning can lead.” For the collection, she distilled the House’s most recognizable motifs – Serpenti, Monete, Tubogas, Divas’ Dream, and Bulgari Bulgari – into objects of evening refinement.
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These motifs have endured the brand’s history because they carry stories: serpents of transformation, ancient coins linked to Rome, sculptural forms that echo classical architecture. Among them, Tubogas – inspired by one of Bulgari’s most potent visual references, the Orphic egg – proved particularly challenging to translate into minaudière form. “To create a wearable, jewel-like object at such a refined scale demanded many rounds of development,” Katrantzou admits.
The House, in fact, had a history of minaudières – a blueprint that was waiting to be revisited. Working closely with the jewelry team, Katrantzou studied the geometry and resonance behind them, but rather than replicate archival pieces, she reinterpreted them.
The result is a collection that is architectural in conception and jewel-like in execution. Perhaps most interesting is that the minaudières house miniature books authored by five extraordinary women — Isabela Rossellini, Linda Evangelista, Kim Jiwon, Sumayya Vally, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — invited by the House to contribute original texts. “Their words become the culture you carry in your bag,” Katrantzou says.
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What defines an icon today? “Relevance,” Katrantzou answers without hesitation. “True icons evolve through time without losing their essence.” Her decision to invite these women, not just to front the campaign but to author original works, was deeply personal. “My intention was to build a community of women around Bulgari bags that act as a source of knowledge,” she explains. “It was essential that their involvement went beyond image.”
In a pointed gesture, the minaudières are deliberately too small to fit a phone. “The scale was entirely intentional,” she says. “It preserves the intimacy we associate with jewelry, the feeling of holding something precious and personal.” Katrantzou adds that the collection was not “designed to solve a practical problem,” but to “carry symbolism, craftsmanship, and emotion.”
By shifting away from conventional practicality, the collection invites a reconsideration of what we value carrying. “These minaudières are conversation starters,” Katrantzou reflects. “They affirm a form of luxury that is symbolic and intentional – timeless objects to be held and cherished, carrying culture forward. They ask us to reconsider what we value carrying.”
