Francesca Amfitheatrof grew up across the globe, living in Tokyo, Rome, Moscow, London and New York. After attending school in London, her debut silverware collection was shown at Jay Jopling’s White Cube contemporary art gallery in London in 1993. Since then she has lent her creative vision for accessories and jewelry to a mix of legacy brands, including Tiffany & Co. She joined Louis Vuitton in 2018 as artistic director of watches and jewelry, ushering in a new chapter for the maison, debuting her first jewelry collection, B Blossom. Most recently, the cosmopolitain creative debuted Deep Time, her largest high jewelry collection yet.
Here, she talks to WWD in detail about what has inspired her most recent collections.
WWD: How has your family background influenced your design aesthetic?
Francesca Amfitheatrof: My mother is Italian and my father was American, I was born in Japan and because of my father’s job as bureau chief of Time, we moved frequently. My design aesthetic is a mixture of Japan, Italy and English art school and all of this heady mixture has resulted in a particular sense of aesthetic, of balance that is obsessed with proportion and harmony, which I suppose comes from Japan, flair from Italy and daring style from English art school.
WWD: Louis Vuitton is known as a leather goods house, founded around the idea of travel. What codes of the brand have you used to create an image in jewelry?
F.A.: Vuitton has such a strong identity, it really knows who it is as a maison and this allows so much freedom to be able to experiment and this is the great open space that I stepped into when I started at Louis Vuitton. In high jewelry we definitely have some strong pillars, we definitely know what we want to say and we have done so since the very first collection, Riders of the Knights. We have very quickly left our mark and you can very much identify a piece of Louis Vuitton high jewelry due to a sense of design aesthetic, our incredible use of the most exclusive materials and the unrivalled savoir faire of Place Vendome mixed with the daring boldness of the design that we create. We have very quickly established ourselves.
WWD: You have designed jewelry for some time, both under your name and for other brands. How do you differentiate?
F.A.: When I step into a brand, I really have to very clearly create an identity that I believe is relevant for that maison so, yes, of course everything that one does starts from a very personal point of view but the ability to step into a maison and to clearly state its strong beliefs and aesthetic integrity is crucial to the job that I do. If I have learned one thing in life, it is that creativity has to ask the right questions.
WWD: With jewelry there is an emotional and sentimental connection with a customer. How does that idea help influence what you create?
F.A.: I think that because all the high jewelry pieces that we create are unique pieces, the incredible bond that we create with our customers and the fact that I am present at these moments and that I love meeting our customers and knowing where and to whom the jewelry goes to has created this magic. We are not an institution, we are a maison with a strong creative leadership and with strong creative freedom. Therefore the connection that we make through the pieces is extremely strong. High jewelry is not only the most exclusive and unique pieces but it is also timeless and it is also such an experience when one has the fortune and exclusivity to be able to own one of the pieces that we have created.
WWD: Who are your jewelry icons, past or present? And why?
F.A.: It really love the period in history in France when women took the helm of some of the most historical jewelry houses — Bovin, Jeanne Toussaint, Belperron — during the period 1920 to 1950. These designers who had such bold modern and powerful design, vision, sensuality and strength have always been my obsession.
WWD: What is your advice on how a modern customer should be wearing their jewelry in their day to day life?
F.A.: I think that modern jewelry is jewelry that they can wear as much as possible. A lot of the high jewelry pieces that we create have different wearability, just so that we can offer our customers the possibility of wearing and enjoying their pieces as much as possible. I think that each customer must choose the pieces according to their lifestyle and sense of pleasure.
WWD: Is there a collection or a piece that resonates to you the most or marks a milestone over your time at Vuitton?
F.A.: Volcano is a really exciting necklace, this intoxicating mixture of tourmalines and grenats, the mixture of yellow gold and white gold, different diamonds. Its fluidity and suppleness is a perfect example of the drama but also of the wearability of the pieces in Deep Time. The stones in this necklace were formed in pegmatite rock, lava. This is the level of passion that we go to in our storytelling. We are not only creating the unique design but we also source stones that reflect the theme of each piece.