It slithers silently around the wrist, neck and ears. Its sinuous structure coils seductively, elegantly, sheathed in lustrous gold. Subtle yet striking, its beauty is impossible to ignore. You’re sure to have seen the hypnotic allure before of Bvlgari’s famous Serpenti, one of the Roman jeweller’s most recognisable motifs and collections. This year, the brand revealed six novelties to the Serpenti Viper line that imbue the collection with a wider range of options for both everyday wear and, when the occasion calls for it, a striking choker with a bite.
The serpent inspiration was first presented by Bvlgari in 1948 with the introduction of its Serpenti Tubogas watch. Mimicking the coiled, undulating form of a snake, the watch featured a strap crafted using the Tubogas technique, in which gold or steel is wrapped around a flexible core. The snake can be fearsome in many cultures, but not to the house’s founder Sotirio Bulgari. Born Greek, Bulgari was likely to have seen the snake as a symbol of rebirth and good fortune. Today, the jewellery house’s Serpenti carries this mythology forward, transforming the symbolism of the snake to represent power and protection. To adorn oneself with Serpenti jewels today is to channel the kind of mystique and fortitude as the legendary Medusa.
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So seductive was Bvlgari’s snake that even Elizabeth Taylor, an avid lover and collector of jewellery, fell under the Serpenti spell. In the 1960s, Taylor was photographed wearing one of the first gem-set ‘secret’ Serpenti watches on the Cinecittà sets of Cleopatra. At the time, both her husband Eddie Fisher and her co-star and lover Richard Burton tried to lure her with Bvlgari jewels, knowing how besotted she was with them. The image of Taylor on set with a Serpenti coiled around her wrist helpd to spread its modern myth, and so Bvlgari’s association with the serpent was cemented.
The snake has been interpreted in a host of abstract, geometric and highly detailed figurative forms. In the Serpenti Viper line, the jeweller has created the purest, most graphic expression of the snake with a linked scale design that coils and curls. Its latest novelties are built for everyday wear, with a wider range of familiar styles: pendant necklaces in yellow or white gold that feature a small serpent coiled around itself—easily worn alone or layered; and hoop earrings in white gold with diamonds accentuating the snake’s head and tail.
Bvlgari has also introduced a new style of dangling earrings in yellow and white gold. Offered with full pavé diamonds or diamond accents on the head and tail, these earrings unfurl and showcase the snake in an elongated form rather than a coiled one. But the most dramatic new piece of them all takes shape as a yellow gold serpent coiled around the neck with a bite. With a design that suits special occasions or evenings, its sculptural form and tapered texture accentuate the snake’s sinuous form, finished with three diamonds set on its head, and six diamonds on its dangling tail.
The arrival of these designs feel particularly timely, as the animal world makes a resurgence across this year’s fashion trends. Animal prints on bags, jeans and heels; and even perhaps the cultural influence of the Chinese year of the Snake, the renewed appetite for the serpentine is slithering its way into jewellery. As Bvlgari’s snake sheds its skin once more, it proves that its timeless signature has ever more refinement to reveal and surprise us with.
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Serpenti Viper mini pendant necklace in white gold with diamonds, $8,510
Available at Bvlgari.
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Serpenti Viper mini pendant necklace in yellow gold, $3,390
Available at Bvlgari.
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Serpenti Viper pendant earrings in white gold with diamonds, $27,900
Available at Bvlgari.
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Serpenti Viper pendant earrings in yellow gold with diamonds, $12,650
Available at Bvlgari.
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Serpenti Viper hoop earrings in white gold with diamonds, $7,910
Available at Bvlgari.
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Serpenti Viper necklace in yellow gold with diamonds, $51,900
Available at Bvlgari.
