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AMO and OMA illuminate an iconic Milanese market for the Bvlgari Summer 2021 show

I Saw The Sun

AMO and OMA illuminate an iconic Milanese market for the Bvlgari Summer 2021 show

Italian luxury jewelry and watch company Bvlgari tasked AMO, the research arm of OMA, to design both the set of its Summer 2021 jewelry show and to direct the look of the resultant video. This isn’t the first time AMO has teamed with an Italian luxury brand; the group regularly designs sets for Prada’s seasonal shows, including the beachside tunnel recently erected for the Spring/Summer 2022 menswear show in Sardinia.

However, for the Bvlgari video, AMO leaned less on models walking through tactile rooms and more towards a sun-drenched Baroque space opera, closer to Blade Runner 2049 or Jupiter Ascending than classic catwalk.

“We conceptualized the production as an interplay of the lyrical and the mechanical,” said OMA partner Ellen van Loon, who headed the project alongside Giulio Margheri. “We wanted to create scenes that resonate with the design of fine jewelry, as much as the artisanship behind the scenes.”

Inside Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the 144-year-old indoor shopping gallery designed by Giuseppe Mengoni, AMO used the long sightlines, a four-story atrium, and extremely textured cast iron facades to their fullest potential. That included the creation of an adjustable lighting disc that in the final video took the role of everything from the sun to an illuminated staircase for models to descend.

Elsewhere, architectural maquettes of varying scales were used to further fill out the scenery, creating a visual link between architecture and jewelry as models peered between shrunken arches and handled models of the hall.

A woman in bvlgari jewelry leaning over a model hall
A still from the film showing an architectural maquette (Copyright AMO)

Although this is the first time Bvlgari has worked with AMO, it certainly isn’t the luxury brand’s first architectural collaboration. The company had worked closely with the late Zaha Hadid since 2008, ultimately releasing a version of its B.ZERO1 ring redesigned by Hadid in 2016 (the design was finalized in 2015, before her death). And just this year, Bulgari dropped the third watch in its annual collaboration with Japanese architect Tadao Ando; each collection draws heavy influences from Ando’s characteristically stark concrete work.

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