Walk along the cobbled streets of the Brera, the old city centre of Milan, where narrow pavements are lined by tall, austere walls that shut out the city yet, through open carriage doors, reveal renaissance palazzos and hidden gardens. This is the historic view of Milan. Then regard the vibrantly modern side where the creative worlds of fashion and furniture design burst with colour and exuberance.
It is these twin souls of Milan, Pomellato’s home city, that is captured so succinctly and expressively in its latest high jewellery collection, The Dualism of Milan. It is the contrast of flamboyance and austerity that creative director, Vincenzo Castaldo, cleverly characterises in two colour palettes for the collection. The elegant sobriety of precious black and white gemstones set in yellow gold, which juxtapose the joyous colour, for which Pomellato is famed, using aquamarines, rubellites, indigolite (a lovely teal blue stone), pink spinels and green tourmalines.
Consider the colour palette of Italian fashion or the feted Memphis-designed furniture which Castaldo celebrates in a fringed plastron necklace of colour-graded spinels (creating the degradé appearance of dip-dyed fabric). Then contrast that with Milan’s historic architecture such as the famous Galleria, built in 1867 and one of the earliest shopping malls, which inspired Castaldo’s chain necklace with a large grey-green tourmaline pendant surrounded by grey sapphires that symbolises the Galleria’s glass dome.
These Monochrome Treasures, as Pomellato names this architectural theme also embrace the city’s ultra-modern skyscrapers in a couple of sinuous, sculptured gold chokers called Asimmetrico, that are either completely pavé-set or have a fluid pattern of pavé diamonds.
These icons of Milanese style are captured in a collection that bears all the hallmarks of Pomellato’s DNA. There are the fluid shapes, the gold gourmette chains, the brightly coloured stones with their cabochon cuts and the graphic prong or pavé settings as featured in the tsavorite and pink sapphire Precious Pavé Cuffs which have a leopard print effect - and would look comfortably at home on a Versace catwalk.
Castaldo also breaks the rules by creating a kaleidoscopic necklace, called Barocco, featuring what Pomellato call the baroque cut which resembles smooth, highly polished gemstone roughs showing off their natural free-form shape. It feels like Pomellato is challenging the dictates of high jewellery design by highlighting these straight-out-of the ground forms, but then Castaldo is doing so in a city that is rooted in creative freedom.
