Her ambition was to create a collection that brought real, precious jewellery into the everyday lives of women. And she found the key in the capital of Rajasthan.
It was not entirely unexpected that Taillac should have been drawn to Jaipur. The glamorous Frenchwoman has had one of those restless, peripatetic lives that are the envy of the armchair traveller. Born in Libya, she was raised in Lebanon before arriving in Paris, which she still regards as somewhat haughty and inhospitable. When her parents returned from a trip to Iran with pictures of the Iranian crown jewels, she was captivated. At the age of 18, she intended to study at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), in New York. ‘I realized that my English wasn’t good enough, so after my baccalaureate I decided to spend a year in London taking lessons. The school was near Victoria – I went there only once. I was used to going to London for the shopping, so I had a glamorous image of the city. When I arrived at the language school near Victoria Station, it all seemed much too grim.’
The solution, obviously, was to get a job in a shop. A chance encounter with jewellery designer Nicky Butler provided the perfect post, at the hip Fulham Road boutique Butler & Wilson. Nicky Butler and Simon Wilson had originally traded in art nouveau and art deco costume jewellery before creating their own pieces. It transpired that their big, bold, sparkly creations worked perfectly with the confrontational, shoulder-padded fashions of the 1980s. The pair soon had a cult brand on their hands.
Taillac fitted right in to this hip, bohemian environment. She eventually became the brand’s press attaché and befriended influential journalists like Hamish Bowles. Her studies almost forgotten, she continued her progress through 1980s London, working for the jeweller Dinny Hall, the couturier Victor Edelstein – a favourite of Diana, Princess of Wales – and the milliner Philip Treacy. By the mid-1990s her list of contacts was almost as impressive as her depth of experience in the luxury sector. ‘The only trouble was that I’d spent so long working for others that I still hadn’t worked out what I wanted to do for myself.’
Toying with the idea of fashion design, she travelled to India to marvel at its rich resources of sumptuous textiles. But when she entered Jaipur’s Gem Palace, her fate was sealed. The gem wholesaler is the most prestigious of the dealers and cutters that throng the city – the Antwerp of coloured gemstones. It is run by the Kasliwal family and once supplied jewellery to the maharajas. Taillac’s eyes popped when she saw the number and quality of gems on display. ‘I was like a child in a sweetshop,’ she says. Her instinctive love of jewellery flooded her system – and with it the desire to design a collection of her own.
‘Originally a friend from Japan had asked me to bring back some gems for her,’ she recounts. ‘I arrived at an opportune moment, because it was the middle of summer and extremely hot, with very few tourists. So I was able to stay for a few weeks soaking up the atmosphere. My first collection grew out of that experience.’
It’s easy to see why Taillac found Jaipur inspiring. An extract from a 2006 article in Time Style & Design magazine perfectly captures the ambience: ‘[M]onkeys swinging in and out of dilapidated, baroque façades, sugarcane presses spewing smoke... Everywhere one hears the piercing shriek of cutting wheels’ (‘Passage to India’, spring 2006). Taillac struck a deal with Munnu Kasliwal, one of the owners of Gem Palace, and today she buys the bulk of her stones through the firm. She even has her atelier next door: she lives in Jaipur for six months of the year with her son Edouard, designing her collections with a handful of loyal craftsmen.
Taillac’s first collection in 1997 displayed all the hallmarks that have made her jewellery famous: sleek yet bohemian, with colourful gems, exquisitely cut, that seemed to burst from their discreet settings. She applied the teardrop-shaped bricolette cut usually reserved for diamonds to gems such as the pastel blue chalcedony or the bright orange fire opal. She shamelessly mixed precious and semi-precious stones. Necklaces were shimmering streams of colour. Taillac combined the bright light and vibrancy of India with her own fashion sense to heat up the frosty world of Parisian fine jewellery.
Thanks to the contacts she’d made throughout her career, she had plenty of people to show her first collection to. Before she knew it, Paris concept store Colette, influential London boutique Brown’s and upmarket New York fashion retailer Barney’s had snapped up pieces. Soon, outlets in Japan began clamouring for her designs. The demand has barely faltered since. ‘People remarked that my first collection was unusually mature and confident – but it had been in my head for about 20 years!’ she remarks. ‘In addition, I had a business side as well as a creative side. I understood very well the field I was entering. I was familiar with Barney’s and I knew my target market.’
Not that the market for fashionable jewellery was particularly large at the time. Barney’s had only one jewellery counter. ‘But now they’ve had to move the cosmetics department to make way for jewellery and accessories. The business has developed incredibly over the last decade.’
Marie-Hélène de Taillac undoubtedly contributed to this new wave of interest in fine jewellery. She has a remarkable talent for communicating her particular form of luxury. She relies on word of mouth and press coverage rather than advertising – and her fascinating story attracts plenty of both. She has also created two boutiques that are the perfect expressions of her brand positioning.
The first, on the Left Bank of Paris, deliberately ‘banished preconceived notions of what a jewellery store is supposed to look like’. Taillac believes that the traditional way of displaying jewellery actually detracts from the beauty and the colour of the stones. She called on Habitat chief designer Tom Dixon to transform a space inside a listed 19th century building into an uncluttered, light-filled salon. Mirrored walls and display cases reflect the pearlescent Paris light and the honey-toned wooden floorboards. Strange globular lighting hovers above, while bright red sofas, sky-blue walls and vivid paintings of gemstones recall the colours of India. Clients are treated as guests, invited to take a seat while jewellery is brought to them like delicious pastries on white trays. A visit to the boutique makes one feel pampered and privileged – which is all the connoisseur of luxury demands.
The second boutique is in Tokyo, a city that Taillac describes as ‘futuristic and gracious at the same time’. The same could be said of her retail environment in the heart of Aoyama. This time Taillac called on Australian designer Marc Newson to help her conceive the space. She wanted the boutique to be as sleek as Tokyo itself, but also ‘luxurious... easy, comforting and inviting’. The walls are decorated in blue lacquer, the floors with pliant taupe leather. Guests are served trays of jewellery as they relax on leather sofas. In Taillac’s words, ‘The overall effect is of an ultra-luxurious futuristic bubble, with clouds of glinting, rainbow-coloured gems floating past on screens or framed in glossy white trays. Place Vendôme feels like a million kilometres – and a whole different era – away.’
One thing that identifies Marie-Hélène de Taillac as a true purveyor of luxury is that rare component in the production and sale of consumer goods: passion. Taillac has a genuine feel for stones. She identifies with the Indians who place gemstones beneath their pillows at night to ward off bad dreams. Many of her designs allow the stones to come into contact with the skin of the wearer, because this is believed to be beneficial to the soul.
‘It makes sense to me, because stones often change colour slightly after you’ve worn them for a while. They’re nourished by the personality of the wearer. I’ve read lots about the mythology surrounding gemstones and I’m convinced that you never choose one by chance. It has a lot to do with your emotional state. If you’re feeling fragile you might choose a pink stone, because it promotes self-confidence. If you’re pregnant you might feel inexplicably drawn to bright orange, which is the colour of fertility. I’ve tested these theories many times – and they work.’
Marie-Hélène imparts all this not in the persuasive tones of a salesman, but with a hasty, almost innoce
nt enthusiasm. She may be a skilled entrepreneur, but she has a romantic streak as wide as the Ganges.
With her collections and her boutiques, Marie-Hélène de Taillac has translated her aristocratic name and luxury industry experience into the sleek contemporary jewellery brand MHT. At the same time, however, she continues to write her own fairytale in an atelier perched above the dust and bustle of Jaipur. Although she has four craftsmen to help her, she selects the stones they work with, and each of the items she sells has passed through her own hands. Her brand will continue to grow, but the limits of its expansion will be defined by her artisanal approach. And that’s just the way she wants it.
4
Watching the watchmakers
* * *
‘It is a challenge to remain a true luxury brand.’
Just outside Geneva there is a light industrial district called Plan-les-Ouates. Locals jokingly refer to it as Plan-Les-Watches – the plain of watches. Driving around, it’s easy to see why. Nearly every unit is the headquarters of a world famous watchmaker. In the space of a few moments I pass Rolex, Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe and Fréderique Constant. I’m on my way to see Piaget, which has agreed to divulge the secrets that have made Switzerland the leading producer of luxury timepieces, with annual exports worth in excess of 16 billion Swiss francs, or €10.3 billion, at the time of writing.
Piaget watches are assembled at La Manufacture, a factory constructed in 2001 to bring together workers previously scattered across numerous ateliers in Geneva. From the air, I’m informed, the layout of the factory mimics the shape of a wristwatch. Some 20,000 watches emerge from here every year, including 150 new models and a number of bespoke commissions. On a short tour, I see watchmakers painstakingly assembling timepieces by hand. Piaget also makes fine jewellery, which is designed and produced at the factory.
But La Manufacture is really only the face of Piaget. To glimpse the firm’s soul, you need to get back into your car and point it towards the mountains of the Jura. The watches may be completed on the outskirts of Geneva, but their movements are made in a remote village called Côte-aux-Fées. The fairytale translation of this name is Hill of Fairies, but in fact it has a more prosaic etymology: in ancient local dialect, ‘faye’ meant ‘sheep’, so the village was originally named Côte-aux-Fayes. The newer version, it’s true, is better for branding purposes.
Winding up into the Jura on an early autumn afternoon, the overriding impression is one of verdant hillsides: sloping grassland and pine forest broken here and there by pretty brick or wood-beamed cottages. But in a few months this area will become an impenetrable expanse of white. By mid-winter, conditions will be harsh enough to challenge even the nature-taming technology of the 21st century, and only the most determined motorists will attempt to battle their way through the drifting snow. In the 19th century, Côte-aux-Fayes and its neighbouring villages would have been entirely cut off.
And that, they say, is one of the factors that enabled the development of the Swiss watch industry. The original inhabitants of the Jura were mostly farmers, who tended their crops or their cattle throughout the warm months of the year. But when winter closed in, they were forced indoors. Staunch Protestants, they were allergic to idleness. And so while the women sat by the fireside making lace, the men constructed wooden puzzles and toys, and then complex clockwork mechanisms – and finally timepieces, which they would travel into town to sell as soon as the snow thawed.
There is a further explanation, also linked to Protestantism – or rather, to Calvinism. Under the church reforms implemented by theologian John Calvin in 1541, the wearing of jewels and finery was banned. This forced Swiss goldsmiths and jewellers to turn their hands to another trade: watchmaking. The Watchmakers’ Guild of Geneva was established in 1601. Soon the city became so crowded with watch-makers that newcomers established themselves in the calm of the Jura, an area already known for its talented craftsmen. According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (http://www.fhc.ch), by 1790 Geneva was exporting 60,000 watches a year.
Born in Côte-aux-Fées in the Swiss Jura in the middle of the 19th century, Georges Edouard Piaget really only had two choices of career: farming or watch making. He chose the latter, becoming an apprentice to a local craftsman before setting up his own workshop in 1874. He was only 19 years old. For many years to come, Piaget would not be a brand owner but a supplier, providing movements to other watch companies. Following his marriage to Emma Bünzli in 1881, Piaget’s business grew almost as fast as his family, forcing him to move to larger premises.
When your car mounts a final incline and rounds a bend into the small cluster of dwellings that form the village, you can see the tall grey building where Piaget lived, worked – and helped to raise no fewer than 14 children (‘Effet du froid’, in the words of Victor Hugo).
Piaget did not live to see his name of the face of a watch. He died in 1931, with the business now under the direction of his third son, Timothée. But it was the third generation that raised the House of Piaget to loftier heights. Timothée’s sons Gérald and Valentin had specific talents that enabled them to transform this artisanal firm into a genuine luxury brand. Gérald was the entrepreneur, widely travelled, with a silver tongue and a head for figures. Valentin was the skilled watchmaker, whose creative flair drove him to make not mere movements but exquisite timepieces, slender marvels in elegant cases. In 1940, the name Piaget appeared on a watch for the first time. Two years later, the company had an advertising slogan: ‘Luxury and precision.’
In 1945, Piaget moved out of the grey building and into a far bigger, whiter building across the street. The new factory – large enough to contain 200 workers – was an imposing sight in the tiny village. And it’s here that Piaget’s movements are still made today. Not only the movements, in fact: a team of specialist engineers also makes the tools that allow the watchmakers to assemble the delicate timepieces.
During my tour, I’m told that even the simplest movement comprises 163 parts. An automatic watch movement features some 200, a ‘complication’ (a watch with intriguing additions such as different time zones, moon phases and so forth) more than 300. And the whole thing begins with the ‘platine’, a disc of metal resembling an exotic coin engraved with runic indentations. This is the base on which the movement is constructed. As I follow the process, the accumulation of interlocking layers of miniscule wheels and cogs, I finally grasp the true purpose of the mysterious ‘jewels’ that each watch secretes. In fact they’re tiny drilled rubies that act as bearings for components. Swiss scientist Nicolas Facio de Duillier developed this technology in the early 18th century and patented it in 1705 – although synthetic rubies are used today. A half-decent watch contains between 15 and 21 jewels.
There is something hypnotic about watching the watchmakers. It’s like witnessing the assembly of a miniature universe – and of course Creationists have used the métier as an analogy, claiming that the intricacies of life argue for the existence of an intelligent designer. The debate would have been familiar to the Swiss-born poet Blaise Cendrars, whose early apprenticeship to a Swiss watchmaker in Russia left him with a constant itch to find out how the world ticked. His writings of the 1920s revelled in modernity and mechanization. He had, he said, an admiration for ‘all these pretty factories, all these ingenious machines’ (‘The art of fiction’, Paris Review, spring 1966). For the watchmakers, there must be something deeply satisfying about creating these little mechanical beating hearts from scratch.
As I move around the factory, I notice once again that the workforce is young and cosmopolitan. Some of the workers may be using the classic loupe that looks so much the part, but none of them has the accompanying stoop and snowy hair that I had imagined. Piaget’s human resources director Yves Bornand – who conducts the tour – tells me that there is a considerable demand for young watchmakers. There are schools in Switzerland, France, Canada and the United States. Even Spain and Finland have a school each, in Barcelona and
Espoo. Some of them barely have enough students to fill the available places. ‘Not enough people are entering the profession, yet the demand for watches remains high,’ says Bornand. ‘It is not an object that is about to disappear.’
Or is it? I’m reminded of some of my friends, who no longer wear watches because they can check the time on their mobile phones. It may be that watches are destined to become purely luxury items – in the sense that they are not essential. The industry itself seems to know what time it is, luring collectors with ever more expensive and complicated timepieces. Take the infamous Opus 3, developed by Vianney Halter and Harry Winston. It’s a mechanical watch with a digital display: the numbers pop into place in a row of six windows. When a prototype was first unveiled at the Baselworld watch fair in 2003, it did not even work. Another five years of development was required before a working model saw the light of day. It was expected to cost more than US $70,000 (‘Make a splash, and then make it tick’, International Herald Tribune, Saturday–Sunday, 14–15 December 2008).
In the economic downturn that struck at the end of 2008, the Swiss watch industry suffered like any other. In November of that year, exports declined for the first time since March 2005, falling by 15 per cent. The ‘accessible luxury’ segment was the hardest hit, with sales of watches costing between €300 and €2,000 shrinking by 30 per cent. Once again, however, the uppermost end of the market remained resilient. The market for watches costing more than €2,000 shrank by only 5 per cent (Reuters, 18 December 2008).
Luxury World: The Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands Page 7