Bulgari at Full Volume
On the eighties, Roman rigour, and why the boldest jewellery house in the world still has the most to say
Andy Warhol said it best: “Bulgari jewellery was the eighties.” Not a part of them, it was them, which is either the greatest endorsement in the history of jewellery, or a warning, depending on your relationship with that decade. I’d argue it’s neither. What Bulgari understood then, and what makes it feel so urgent now, is something more enduring than fashion: that boldness, done with rigour, never dates.
The eighties were when that logic fully crystallised. The house’s defining move was the Parentesi collection, launched in 1982 and inspired, in the most Roman way imaginable, by the travertine joints in the city’s ancient paving stones. Modular, architectural, designed to be worn from morning until night by the post-feminist working woman who needed jewellery to keep up with her life, it was the first truly modern jewellery system. Each piece connected to the next; gold and steel combined without apology; the structure was the ornament. It was also, notably, the most copied design of its era, which tells you everything about how right it was.
Then there was the cabochon, perhaps Bulgari's most quietly subversive move. Where high jewellery had long prized the faceted stone, all light return and technical display, Bulgari turned instead to the smooth, domed cut: emeralds, rubies, and sapphires worn like river stones, their colour deep and still rather than brilliant and performing. It read as almost primitive against the conventions of the time, and that was entirely the point.
What makes it collectible now is precisely what made it scandalous then: the refusal to be delicate. The Tubogas bracelets, the Cabochon rings, the hematite and gold combinations, these are pieces with the confidence of architecture. Sotheby’s noted recently that signed eighties jewellery from houses like Bulgari is commanding serious attention at auction, and on the resale market, Parentesi and Tubogas pieces are consistently among the most sought-after. In a jewellery landscape that spent a decade whispering, something that was always willing to speak at full volume feels, right now, like a relief.
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