Van Cleef & Arpels Gets a Glittering New Manhattan Boutique
Given Van Cleef & Arpels’s long and glittering history, it’s easy to forget that it all began with a simple love story: the marriage of Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle Arpels in 1895. Eleven years after that happy occasion, the groom partnered with his brother-in-law to found the jewelry company, and the couple’s descendants ran the business until the end of the 20th century. Appropriately, when the firm (now owned by the Swiss corporation Richemont) decided to update its iconic Manhattan flagship, on Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, the goal was to evoke the intimacy of a family home.
Enter Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku of Jouin Manku Studio, the design team responsible for an array of the brand’s recent retail projects, among them the refurbished boutique on Paris’s Place Vendôme. For the New York outpost, which reopened in December, the duo expanded the existing two-story shopping space into a luminous three-level showcase. The ground floor highlights designs both antique and new, many of which are displayed in cloche-style glass cases, while the mezzanine (accessible via a sinuous staircase) is outfitted with a library and devoted in part to timepieces and bridal collections. On the top floor is a room reserved for parties and presentations to VIP clients, gatherings illuminated by a sparkling bespoke glass light fixture. “As you go up, the spaces feel more private,” says Nicolas Bos, president and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels Worldwide, likening the shop’s layout to that of a townhouse.
Capturing a local sensibility was also a priority since each boutique is meant to be different. Here New York’s Art Deco heritage was mined, a tactic evident in the use of streamlined curves and brass. The latter forms a gleaming leitmotif, in façade panels and in other details throughout the interiors. Still, the designers weren’t about to overlook the possibilities presented by Van Cleef & Arpels’s rich legacy. Embroidered onto the ground floor’s silk wall coverings is a pattern of thriving ferns that not only pays homage to the company’s penchant for natural imagery but also offers a fitting symbol for the store’s renewed vitality. At 744 Fifth Ave., New York, NY; vancleefarpels.com
