For over 75 years, the Horsebit has been Gucci’s best-behaved signature. First sketched in an artisan’s notebook at the end of the 1940s, it went on to clasp loafers in the 1950s and wind its way around bracelets and watches by the 1970s, without ever needing a reinvention. With Demna now at the creative helm and plenty changing at Gucci, the Horsebit is the one thing the house knows not to touch. Its new Horsebit fine jewellery and watch collection doesn’t try to reinvent it. Instead, it pares the motif back to its cleanest lines, and that unmistakable shape is all it needs.
Shot by Carlijn Jacobs, the campaign plays out like a film told entirely in close-ups. The pieces glint between light and shadow, skin glows under low light, and in one frame a diamond-studded pendant hangs from a gold chain caught between glossy red lips. It’s proof that simple doesn’t have to mean shy.
The designs stick to the essentials. Necklaces come as a yellow gold chain or as small and large pendants in yellow or white gold, each one set with diamonds. Contrarié rings, where the two ends of the band cross rather than meet, give the motif a subtle twist in diamond-set yellow gold. Bracelets run from a diamond chain to sculptural bangles in two sizes, one set with diamonds and one in smooth, bare gold, and they sit just as well alone as they do stacked with the white gold pieces. For anyone who’d rather wear the time than check their phone, there’s a Horsebit watch on a steel chain bracelet with a crisp silver dial. There’s nothing fussy, nothing that will date.
The Horsebit has been part of Gucci’s fine jewellery since 2004, and fashions have come and gone around it ever since. Pieces this clean will still look right in another twenty years, which might be the sexiest thing about them. Discover the collection here.
Photography courtesy of Gucci.
