The Spellbinding Beauty of Van Cleef’s Rare and Exquisite Rubies
When Van Cleef & Arpels invites you on a press trip to look at rare rubies in Bangkok, you think, Why not? You like rubies, and you’ve never been to Bangkok! So after a 22-hour flight—ever try watching A Star Is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody four times each?—I arrive in Thailand, rest up at the Peninsula Hotel high above the Chao Phraya river, and wake ready to greet the day.
Before we see any jewelry, Van Cleef has organized a number of activities, the first of which is a cruise to the stunning villa of an expat French woman who has lived here for decades and is glamorous and a bit mysterious. Serious-faced local women in lace blouses are gathered around the dining room table, prepared to school us in the fine art of flower arranging. Though some in our group are quite adept at this, for me it has all the joy of sewing on a button. But the house is gorgeous, the day is sparkling—and best of all—Van Cleef is allowing me to skip the next activity, a cooking class! (I know how to get Thai food, and it involves a phone, not a pan.)
Instead, I order two dresses to be made overnight by the hotel tailor, and then visit the mall next door, Icon Siam. A member of the Van Cleef team plays hooky with me; she buys a pair of baggy silk trousers for the equivalent of $47, and though she looks likes she weighs 100 pounds soaking wet, she takes the large. (Ever try to buy shoes in Tokyo? You will know what I mean.)
The day ends with a lavish dinner in the candlelit gardens outside the 100-year-old Wanglee mansion. When I observe that this place looks like Bette Davis’s house in The Letter, I am met with blank stares. Could that be pity in the young eyes staring at me? Come on, guys! It was nominated for seven Oscars in 1940.
The next morning, a stern guard taps me hard on the shoulder and mutters “sexy,” when my partially visible shoulder tries to get into the Grand Palace. I kind of don’t mind being called sexy (hardly the way my overstuffed baby doll style is usually described), but I don’t like being hit. Nearly overcome by the crowds and the heat, we bag on the palace, because really, who cares about a royal estate? (I mean, I have already seen the mall . . .) Plus, our next stop is the reason we have traveled 8,000 miles from Manhattan—it is time to see what Van Cleef calls “The Treasure of Rubies.”
They do not disappoint. Among the 60 new creations on view is a cabochon ring nestled in a bed of baguettes and bracelet whose rubies and diamonds are laid out as a labyrinth. A fringy Deco-inspired necklace might be worn flung down your back like Picasso’s friend Sara Murphy did in the South of France in the 1920s; a retro bracelet would have suited Marlene Dietrich, who was not just an incredible actor but a real hero of the Second World War. More dramatic even than Dietrich is a pair of earrings with dangling detachable pear-shaped pendants—one ruby and one diamond—because who says earrings have to match? (The price may be serious, but the design can be full of fun.) And, of course, there is a version of Van Cleef’s famous zip necklace and a ballerina brooch, an icon of the maison. A 25-carat cushion-cut ruby that can be worn as a ring or around your neck (practical!) is so spectacular, so singular, that it is under a bell jar, but everything else is en plein air, begging you to touch. You may not.
Nicolas Bos, Van Cleef’s CEO and president, is frankly enthralled with these pieces. He tells me that rubies represent power, blood, and fire: “Passion you cannot control.” Previous Van Cleef collections may have been organized around a variety of themes (a Shakespeare play maybe, or a fairy tale), but this collection is a pure tribute to the glory of the stones themselves—their distinctive characters and personalities, their diversity and their richness.
But all that glitters is not red. On our last day, we visit the reclining Buddha, a massive statue more than 150 feet long and a masterwork in gold leaf. We put our Choos and Repettos in the plastic bags provided for the purpose, and walk barefoot into the Buddha’s home in the Wat Pho temple. It is strange and moving, but not at all solemn—in fact, this Buddha has a rather mischievous look on his face.
How quickly the hours fly by! In what seems like the time it would take to slap a labyrinth bracelet on my wrist, we suddenly need to head for the airport, to curl up in our lie-flat seats—oh, the heaven of business class—and dream of the treasure of rubies, while Gaga and Bradley play out their tragic love story, and Rami convinces us, once again, that whether or not we are drenched in precious stones, whether we live on the Chao Phraya or the Hudson, we are indeed all the champions of the world.
