At Van Cleef & Arpels, history is rarely something to be preserved behind glass. Instead, it is mined, polished and reimagined. This season, the maison presents two collections that speak to different facets of its identity: Perlée, a celebration of one of its most enduring design signatures, and Fascinating Egypt, an ambitious high jewellery odyssey inspired by one of civilisation’s most enduring obsessions. The contrast is striking.
First introduced in 2008, Perlée has become synonymous with the golden bead – a motif so deeply woven into Van Cleef & Arpels’ visual language that it now feels inseparable from the house itself. Yet its story stretches back much further. The polished spheres first appeared in the late 1940s, animating the joyful Couscous jewels and later finding expression in the twisted gemstone creations of the 1960s before eventually tracing the contours of Alhambra.
For 2026, the collection returns to the motif with renewed focus. New three-row rings in yellow, rose and white gold wrap around the finger like streams of liquid light, their graduated beads creating a gentle rhythm of volume and reflection. Across each surface, a diagonal sweep of diamonds introduces movement and brilliance, the stones appearing to float between the golden spheres thanks to an intricate nail-setting technique.
Perlée
Elsewhere, vivid sapphires, rubies and emeralds inject colour into the collection. The saturated blue of sapphire, the lush green of emerald and the rich crimson of ruby punctuate the warmth of polished gold, transforming a familiar design language into something unexpectedly contemporary. The result feels less like jewellery and more like punctuation – pieces designed to be layered, stacked and accumulated over time.
Fascinating Egypt meanwhile, embraces the grandeur of narrative. Comprising a vast selection of around 180 high jewellery creations, the collection draws on centuries of fascination with ancient Egypt, from Napoleon’s campaigns and Jean-François Champollion’s deciphering of hieroglyphics (the French philologist and orientalist was a founding figure in early Egyptology) to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s (King Tut) tomb and the waves of Egyptomania that swept through European art and design. It also revisits a chapter of Van Cleef & Arpels’ own history. The maison was creating Egyptian-inspired jewels as early as the 1920s and counted members of Egypt’s royal family among its clients.
Rather than reproducing antiquity, Fascinating Egypt filters it through a distinctly contemporary lens. Lotus flowers become graphic ruby-set clips. Pharaohs and queens emerge as gem-encrusted figurative brooches. Mythological creatures are transformed into miniature sculptures articulated in diamonds, emeralds, lapis lazuli and turquoise.
Fascinating Egypt
Among the standouts is the Rivage égyptien necklace, where 37 Zambian emerald drops cascade beneath abstract motifs inspired by papyrus plants and birds along the Nile. Equally arresting is the Déesse ailée Mystérieuse necklace, its sweeping ruby-set wings punctuated by a spectacular 14.05-carat Type IIa diamond that can be detached and worn as a ring. Throughout the collection, the maison’s celebrated Mystery Set technique appears like a magician’s sleight of hand, allowing gemstones to form uninterrupted fields of colour with almost no visible metal.
What makes Fascinating Egypt particularly compelling is its refusal to separate archaeology from fantasy. References range from Art Deco Egyptomania to comic books, cinema and even the postmodern geometry of the late Italian architect Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group, the influential Italian design and architecture collective active in Milan from 1980 to 1987. Ancient symbols are rendered with a distinctly modern energy, proving that Egypt remains less a historical period than a living source of imagination.
Together, Perlée and Fascinating Egypt reveal two sides of Van Cleef & Arpels. One distils the maison’s essence into a simple golden bead. The other expands its universe into an epic of mythology, craftsmanship and storytelling. Both demonstrate the same belief: that jewellery, at its most powerful, is never merely decorative. It is a vessel for memory, fantasy and desire.
When gold beads meet precious stones, Van Cleef & Arpels Perlée is born.
Photography courtesy of Van Cleef & Arpels.
