FEAST FOR THE SENSES BY ROB TENNENT AND KATHRYN MADDEN
PHOTOGRAPHY: Rob Tennent
WORDS: Kathryn Madden
Golden chains coil around white china, crystal-encrusted cuffs clink like champagne flutes and slender, stacked rings are served in place of petit fours, each a morsel for the imagination. “When you sit down at a dinner table where you don’t know the other guests, a piece of jewellery can help start the conversation,” says Marco Panconesi, creator of this indulgent spread for his namesake label, Panconesi. Medallions drape down his chest and fine hoops creep up his ear, while his Rhodesian ridgeback, Rajah, sports strands of stones around his neck. “They’re his signature,” says Panconesi.
The Italian designer’s fascination with jewellery emerged in the frescoed heart of Florence, where he grew up. “My family kept a few pieces in the safe,” he remembers. “One was a gold bracelet, made of very simple [interlocking] bangles. Every year, my grandpa would give a bangle to my grandma on their anniversary. In the passing of time, this bracelet became bigger and bigger. It’s still an inspiration that I carry with me, about the emotional value of jewellery and how it can change in time and adapt to the body.”
Panconesi studied at the Polimoda fashion school, before landing a plum first accessories design post at Givenchy in Paris. Soon came stints creating jewels and bags for Balenciaga, Mugler, Mulberry, Peter Pilotto, Fendi and Fenty, under rarefied tutelage. “Every creative director gave me a little piece of education,” he says. “Riccardo [Tisci, who he worked with at Givenchy] was majorly focused on very precise inspirations; for every show he wanted to see a wealth of research. With Mugler, we were looking to find new silhouettes and explore how jewellery interacts with the body; with Johnny [Coca] at Mulberry, he let me work cross-category and I started to put jewellery on bags. And at Fenty, it was interesting working with Rihanna as she really understood fashion as a buyer. Her strong aesthetic was inspiring in that sense, and also on a personal level.”
In 2019, Rihanna was pictured wearing a pair of hoops that morphed, Transformer-style, into ear cuffs. They were Panconesi’s first solo design. “The Upside Down Hoops sparked a concept and an aesthetic I couldn’t silence in my heart,” says the designer, who launched his brand in 2018. Based in Paris, it’s now comprised of a small team, supported by family ateliers and artisans in Arezzo, Italy. He’s continued to riff on this idea of transformation, experimenting wildly with liquid movement – spirals, coils and folds of plated brass and copper – and drawing on the Victorian technique of en tremblant, where brooches or pendants were mounted on tiny springs to tremble and shimmy with its wearer. A rainbow of malachite, lapis lazuli, jasper and jade nod to Panconesi’s personal interest in archaeology – semi-precious stones pulled from the earth and rendered into museum-worthy artefacts. But they also feel fresh, unbound by trends or time.
“I hope people feel empowered when they wear my designs,” says Panconesi. “Jewellery is larger than life… It needs to elevate your spirit.” One of his new Dusk necklaces, he continues, “is designed to float around the neck; you don’t know where it starts and finishes”. It’s a piece as likely to adorn a well-heeled Milanese sciura as it is a Parisian sneakerhead. Panconesi pieces are fluid not just in form, but in feeling. “I’ve always been surprised by the variety of ages and different people supporting the brand who make it their own… It’s beautiful to see.”
Dazzlingly inclusive, the label is part of a new wave of jewellery disruptors taking up space between costume and haute joaillerie. Panconesi’s enamelled copper ear cuffs, for example, retail for under $300, extending up to four figures for exquisite gemstone necklaces cascading with colourful orbs. They’re the kind of creations that echo the allure of fine jewellery – the sense of occasion, the glint in the light – without the prohibitive price tag. “I wanted to position the brand so it’s not just for the one per cent,” says Panconesi, who also integrates crystals with a discerning eye – a fringe benefit of his ongoing role as design director at Swarovski. “But customers are starting to request more fine materials, so we’ll be working on that. And we do custom designs in gold and silver on request.”
Generations from now, if Panconesi’s jewels were discovered in a grandparent’s safe, he’d want them to be pulled out and worn… perhaps to a dinner party with strangers. And what conversation would they spark? “I would like people to think that they didn’t belong to any period of time, or to any trend in fashion,” he says. “In that sense, we’ll never get old.”
