When Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the twin-sister designers behind cult label The Row, introduced their summer season assortment at an opulent 18th-century hôtel particulier throughout Paris Trend Week final month, a number of eagle-eyed visitors might have noticed two of the fashions clutching small, gilded bronze minaudières, or carrying a dangling, geometric bracelet.
Many of those objets, engraved with leaf and flower motifs, have been actually uncommon Thirties items by Line Vautrin, the prolific Twentieth-century French jewelry designer and artist famed for her hand-wrought bijoux, cigarette instances and mirrors. “We’ve got at all times admired Line Vautrin’s work and got here throughout a uncommon assortment of items earlier than our summer season assortment present in Paris,” says Ashley Olsen, who paired one of many jeweller’s distinctive bracelets with a floor-length black internet gown.
A partnership between The Row and Mon Classic, the luxurious classic sourcing service based by Vestiaire Collective’s former head of classic, Marie Blanchet, the 14-piece assortment options one-of-a-kind Vautrin items courting from 1930 to 1965, and shall be bought solely at The Row’s shops by appointment this November. Among the many items within the assortment is a uncommon Fifties bronze cuff, a 1952 multicoloured Murano glass bead necklace and a Thirties matching crimson necklace and earring set comprised of Talosel – a light-weight kind of resin that Vautrin invented and patented herself within the Fifties (all worth upon request).
1952 Murano glass-bead necklace with silver clasp, POA
Earrings from a Thirties Talosel jewelry set, POA
A self-taught artist, Vautrin learnt methods to make objects in gilt and bronze as a younger woman watching her father work in his metallic foundry. After a short stint within the studios of Elsa Schiaparelli, she opened her personal boutique in Paris in 1938 the place she bought jewelry, powder compacts, ashtrays, paperweights, mirrors and buttons comprised of glass, resin and bronze – a cloth at the moment reserved for industrial use. She would typically inscribe them with riddles, mythological symbols or verses from her favorite poets resembling Dante or Prévert, incomes her the sobriquet “poetess of metallic”.
“What makes Line Vautrin’s items so coveted as we speak is their rarity, originality, artistry and sincere magnificence,” says Blanchet. “The poetry of Line Vautrin’s work makes it an incarnation of true, refined luxurious in addition to a testomony of the time. Like 1910s Mariano Fortuny clothes, Line Vautrin’s jewelry and ornamental objects are to me the definition of classic.”
Throughout her lifetime her whimsical creations, which included buttons manufactured from blown glass containing tiny ships and jagged, convex “Witch” mirrors, discovered favour with Paris’s beau monde, together with Françoise Sagan, Brigitte Bardot and Yves Saint Laurent, however she has continued to be rediscovered since her loss of life in 1997, experiencing a resurgence of curiosity following a sale of her work at Christie’s Paris in 2015, the place a record-setting 1963 mirror, “Si tous les Gars du Monde”, bought for €421,500.
A necklace from a Fifties Talosel jewelry set, POA
Fifties bronze cuff, POA
Thirties bronze medallion belt, POA
For the Olsen sisters, who’re identified for his or her curatorial eye and love of artwork and classic – from carrying classic Dior and Chanel robes on the Met Gala to filling the partitions of their New York townhouse retailer with works by artists like Basquiat and Man Ray – the gathering marks their ongoing partnership with Blanchet, with whom they curated a number of classic garments that have been bought on The Row’s bodily shops and e-commerce web site final yr.
For Blanchet, it’s an opportunity to showcase Vautrin’s initimatable designs: “Seeing Line Vautrin’s poetic items of artwork in The Row’s prefall 2023 present the place they sit seamlessly inside The Row’s stylish and elevated world is, I hope, one of the simplest ways of celebrating the unbelievable work of one of many main French artists of the Twentieth century.”