Amaffi has long built its name in the world of scent, with perfumes crafted with great care from rare natural ingredients sourced from around the world. Its bottles are just as distinctive, often rendered in saturated colour, sculptural forms and flashes of gold. Now, the house is taking those same codes somewhere new with Amaffi Belts, part of a wider expansion outside fragrance.
For the debut, the house has tapped Francesca Hayward as its new global muse. Hayward comes from a world where the tiniest details matter, and that precision has informed the way she thinks about craft more broadly. “In ballet, the audience might not see every detail, but they feel it,” Hayward says. “Every single part of what I do is detail-oriented. Craftsmanship, to me, is discipline made visible.”
When it comes to getting dressed, Hayward is just as alert to the way one small styling decision can completely change how an outfit comes together. Even as a minor component of a look, where a belt sits, how it changes the silhouette and even the colour it introduces can alter the whole thing. “I think the beauty of wearing a belt is that it changes the way that you hold yourself,” she says. “It changes the way you feel about yourself, the way you present yourself and walk down the street.”
Coming from a ballerina, whose work depends so heavily on an awareness of the body, it makes sense that Hayward notices these shifts. In ballet, a slight adjustment can change the way a line reads from the audience. Clothes can work similarly, particularly with an accessory that sits directly at the waist and changes the proportions around it. “The belts are not just something that you wear; they’re a feeling that you, I suppose, inhabit,” Hayward says. “The word craftsmanship implies to me someone who’s spent years and years honing their art.”
Across five colourways, Colombian Emerald, Moonstone, Rubyheart, Champagne Gold and Black Diamond, the pieces return to the same saturated palette and ornamentation seen across the house’s bottles. Each one is handcrafted in Tuscany from Nappa leather and suede, then hand-cut and stitched before Swarovski crystals are applied. A brass buckle plated with one micron of 24-karat gold anchors the design, while lambskin lines the interior.
Accessories may be new territory for the house, but the idea behind them is already familiar. Much like choosing a scent, putting on a belt can come down to the mood you are in or simply how you want to feel that day, with both becoming small but deliberate parts of how someone presents themselves. “The smallest details can change everything,” Hayward says. “This collaboration with Amaffi feels very natural because it’s an art form as well, making these elevated luxury beautiful pieces.”
For a house that has spent years presenting fragrance as artful objects, the belts pick up on the same decorative cues, from their jewel-like hues to the ornate embellishments. It comes back to Hayward’s point about the finer touches changing everything, with the house’s first step into a new category showing just how much one element can change a whole look.
