The Renaissance Watchmaker

Bulgari is celebrating the centennial anniversary of its jewellery watches for women this year

- Varun Godinho

Anyone who has even a mild inclination towards horology in general and Bulgari in particular will agree that the brand is irrefutably among the top three most exciting watchmakers in the world today. How else do you explain not one, but two awards at last year’s Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) – popularly referred to as the Oscars of the watchmaking world – as well as the Red Dot Best of the Best, which positions the brand’s wrist-bound ticking dynamos as true design icons?

When I meet Fabrizio Buonomassa Stigliani, Watches Design Center senior director aka the design boss at Bulgari’s watch division, during his recent visit to Dubai, I’m half-expecting him to wax lyrical about how the 134-year-old brand is reorganising itself to put watches at the front-and-center of all it does. But instead, he throws me a curveball. “Bulgari is a jewel maker. The core business of the brand is jewels. It’s a jewel maker that makes beautiful timepieces.”

This doubling down of Bulgari’s mission statement is an important one for the brand’s identity. Megastars from Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Lauren to Ingrid Bergman to Anita Ekberg were known for spending many hours at the Via dei Condotti flagship store in Rome fussing over the brand’s exquisite jewellery.