The Rarity Principle

Alessandro Sabbatini, founder of Sabba Paris, walked away from Cartier to create something entirely his own. Now he reveals why true luxury lies in rarity, not recognition

- By Amrita Katara

Walking away from Cartier—your dream job since childhood—at 25 takes a certain type of conviction. Alessandro Sabbatini had it—though he didn't know it at the time. “I thought I had already achieved what I wanted in life,” he tells me over video call from Hong Kong, where he’s showing pieces to a select group of collectors. It’s typical of his approach—low-key, personal, worlds away from the fanfare of traditional jewellery presentations. Back in the French capital, Sabba Paris operates from a single showroom with the discretion of an old-world atelier.

“I was never dreaming about having my own jewellery brand. I was dreaming of designing for Cartier,” Sabbatini admits. The shift came through a conversation that lodged itself in his mind like a splinter. A friend, older and presumably wiser, posed a simple question: if you can design for Cartier, why not for yourself? “I never thought about that,” Sabbatini says. “It took me two years before really quitting Cartier and doing my own designs.” Those two years were spent learning to distinguish between designing jewellery and designing his jewellery. “When you are designing for yourself, it’s completely another story.”

That story began in Rome when Sabbatini was just ten years old and his mother dragged him to an exhibition about diamonds.

It proved to be one of those encounters that reorders a life. “It was a shock for me,” he says. He was transfixed by two Renaissance paintings— works by Piero della Francesca and Botticelli. “I was like, ‘Oh my God’—not just that the jewellery [was] beautiful but also shown in a particular way.” He told his mother right then: “I want to design jewellery.” Most declarations uttered by children are forgotten by bedtime; this one held for a lifetime.