Trains, planes and automobiles. We’ll have to add speedboats to the story in The Escape. Capri was the early summer locale for the unveiling of Louis Vuitton’s sixth high jewellery collection, which VIP clients from around the world including eight couples from Singapore had been invited to. 

A sequel to last year’s Acte V, which took aesthetic cues from the 1920s and art deco with its strong design play on the “V”, Acte V/The Escape is a stylistic evolution into the decade that followed the Roaring Twenties. 

Truth be told, the 1930s wasn’t a great time: the world was mired in the Great Depression and political turmoil would lead to the Second World War by the turn of the decade. Who wouldn’t want to escape that bleak reality? Fortunately for those still with the means, the same period heralded the genesis of the luxury jetset lifestyle. 

With revolutionary developments in aviation literally taking off, the well heeled happily left behind the Gilded Age of transcontinental travel by rail or international passage by ship, for the Gliding Age of long-distance air travel. 

An obsession with aerodynamics spilled over from aviation to automobiles, trains, architecture and all manner of consumer goods, growing into a late art deco-style that became Streamline Moderne, or art moderne, that lasted into the 1950s. Sweeping horizontal lines and fluid curves were borrowed from industrial design of steamships and planes. 

Destination: Design
Acte V/The Escape comprises all-new creations grouped into themes named for travel hotspots and architectural icons of the ’30s.

First, there’s Majestic, named after the historic hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, that in its heyday drew crowds for its thermal spas and gambling dens; Excelsior, a nod to the beachfront hotel in Venice Lido that drew leading men and ladies and their fashionably wealthy consorts, and was the birthplace of the Venice Film Festival. Also, Beau Rivage, for the hotel that overlooks Lake Geneva; and Luxor, the hotel on the bank of Egypt’s River Nile. 

The other three sets pay tribute to the playgrounds of the moneyed set: Long Island and Newport, where America’s newly rich escaped the city’s summer to lavish holiday homes they built or rented; and Capri—need we say more? 

While design themes unite the pieces within the subsets, the jewellery pieces do not definitively reflect aesthetic references to the places or buildings themselves. The continuation of using “V” as a design element is seen in new iterations of black carved onyx in the Newport pieces and in striking cyan or green Grand Feu enamel over etched gold, as well as in the lines of recurring kite- and fan-shaped motifs that sport softly concave edges. 

Perhaps the most obvious visual link would be the colours in the Capri pieces to the azure waters this Italian isle is famed for; the jewellery boasts mesmerising black opals that blaze with flashes of neon green and violet in a medley of ultramarine and cobalt blues. 

Fiery Australian opals from the prestigious Lightning Ridge mines take centrestage in two necklaces in the Majestic set. The same gemstone was used by Louis Vuitton in star pieces last year, but where their blues sparkled like the ocean, this year’s opals captured the colours of the setting sun. 

Absolutely stunning, a 30.60-carat smooth opal triangle scintillates with an abstraction of the full rainbow of colours. It has all the signs of a true collector’s gemstone, we were told: a lively pattern that flashes with colour, with red, which is the most important colour for opals, and orange being the most obvious. 

The gem is perched between the ends of a multistrand pearl necklace and two pearl tassels. Lustrous white Akoya pearls shimmer amid diamonds, like the white crests that dance in a boat’s wake. Silvery grey Tahiti pearls gleam in other necklaces such as the Long Island. 

Anywhere, Anytime
The fluidity of the pearls and in fact all the pieces is a very important element in this collection, emphasises Hamdi Chatti, vice-president of Watches and Fine Jewellery at Louis Vuitton Malletier.

The house calls it a “hymn to lightness”, a suppleness that is seen not just in the bayadere (multistrand) necklaces and tasselled bracelets but even the diamond- and precious stone-set bangles and cocktail rings, which have clefts to give them a multipart feel of airiness. 

Asked what he finds most interesting about Louis Vuitton’s high jewellery journey over the past six collections, Chatti replies, “It’s the idea more and more that you can wear your jewellery, especially your high jewellery, on any occasion, and you can mix and match. Because it’s not stiff, it’s fluid and natural, you want to wear it often—you don’t wait a long time between wears or to keep it in a safe. I like that idea very much, and our clients love it, too.”

It’s also interesting how the house has deliberately chosen to do a continuation of last year’s Acte V instead of coming up with a different theme, carrying last year’s art deco aesthetic into The Escape. 

This reinforces the high jewellery design codes that were introduced last year, making the “V” and its derivatives (the fan; the pagoda roof-like motif; the diamond and the kite; the wing-like polygon with curved lines) now even more distinctively associable to Louis Vuitton. And of course, the house’s patented star- and flower-cut diamonds continue to make their appearances.

This identifiable style will certainly serve the discerning client who has a strong association not just with the design, but the lifestyle that Louis Vuitton represents, Chatti says. “She’s the same client who buys Cartier and Chaumet; she buys a lot of high jewellery and is aware of what the other companies are doing. But she also buys a lot of Vuitton—fashion, bags, luggage—and likes our high jewellery because of its strong style and also because it’s very comfortable and natural to wear,” he says. “She appreciates the quality and the craft, but especially identifies with our lifestyle.”

The VIP clients enjoying the jetset modo di vivere on their Capri getaway evidently agreed. It had been a couple of breezy days of sightseeing, roaming the town centre, tarrying along picturesque little roads, and jetting off by speedboat to various restaurants along the coastline for fabulous seafood, mozzarella di bufala aplenty, wine, limoncello and lots of sunshine. 

When I bump into Christopher Kilaniotis, president of Louis Vuitton South Asia, in the airport lounge on the way back, he shares that some 80 per cent of the jewellery showcased that week—Acte V/The Escape, as well as pieces from previous collections—had been snapped up, and more clients were still arriving that day.

Whether or not it’s all true about life being about the journey and not the destination, Louis Vuitton’s high jewellery adventure has certainly begun.