DESIGN EXPERT Lucia Silvestri
– How does it feel to be a part of the Bvlgari brand, Bvlgari family? You are working there more than 30 years already.
– Exactly 40 years!
– This is an anniversary! Congratulations! You have almost grown up with this family.
– I was 5 years old when I started, I’m joking! Anyway, I just was very young. If you’ll ask me
how do I feel about it, I would answer that I feel very proud.
– Do you feel yourself a part of the family?
– Of course.
– You are very well known because of the fearless to make risky decisions. The entire
world was excited when you cut 165-carat to 125-carat sapphire. How did you feel about the necessity to do this?
– The risk was very significant, very high, but in this job you have to take some risks.
My experience, my knowledge helped me to understand if it was possible. Of course not only
I was behind that. Behind me was Mr. Bulgari and also the suppliers, a team of people that
could take the decision. But at the end of the talks I said: «Ok, let’s do it».
– Were you satisfied with a result?
– Of course I was, because that way I could feel the gem. When it was so big it had really no life
inside. But thanks to this transformation I could see the soul of this stone.
– It was such a cardinal decision in your life when you were 18 years old: you were a student biological faculty, but decided to change all your life and to start doing gemology. How did it happen? What was behind this decision?
– I just followed my instincts; I fell in love with gems. I didn’t understand at that time I was
in love, but I felt an attraction for the gems.Especial attraction. I was very happy every
morning to wake up and to go to the office to see the stones. I thought that was my destiny
or something like invisible relation between the gems and me. It started like that. And of course I
had a great support from the Bulgari family, they believed in me, they invested at me, they were my mentors. I was very young, but they could find out I had something special with gems. Special sort of talent for this kind of job.
– You said that your the highest mission is to show symbolic motives of the Bvlgari House in a new way and to transfer this style from the past to the future. Did you already unravel the secret of Generation Z, about which everybody is talking now?
– Our challenge is to catch, to interest this generation with our symbols. For example,
B.zero1 Collection, one of our iconic symbols, we started it 20 years ago, but it is still very cool,
very young, for young generation. Such symbols as B.zero1 are something I very proud of.
– What this collection means to you?
– I grew up with this collection, the company launched B.zero1 20 years ago and I remember
there was a revolution every moment, because our type of jewelry was with gems with diamonds, not just a plain gold. And for that time it was really revolutionary, very innovative and someway daring, we had to be daring and to be somewhat crazy to see something different and creative.
– Tell us, please, a little bit more about a mission of this collection.
– The mission is to reach new generation for sure, and also to be easy to wear for all women
and men. You can wear it with another collection and also alone, it is for free time and for formal
time too. I’m very proud we have this collection in different types of gold and also with a ceramic.
– The Bulgari woman, can you describe her?
– It is an independent woman, like me, feminine, like me, strong, but some way romantic. But the
first word of course is «independent».
– If we are talking about the Generation Z and the future, did digitalization actually impact on your career or life?
– Of course it changes a lot. And I especially can see the changes, because I’m not a part of
Generation Z. I’m on Instagram. I realized that my profile is very well followed by young people. They know everything about me and I was so surprised when I was in Japan and Japanese young people recognized me. Everybody knows me, of course, in my small world, but thanks to Instagram I’m very well known. Till 2013 my world was a secret world, but now it’s open.