Jewelry Designer Francesca Amfitheatrof Exits Louis Vuitton
- Francesca Amfitheatrof has left Louis Vuitton after seven years of designing fine and high jewelry collections, including the recent "Awakened Hands, Awakened Minds" collection featuring traceable rubies and a tiara.
PARIS — Francesca Amfitheatrof has left Louis Vuitton, where she was charged with designing fine and high jewelry collections.
In a statement released Wednesday evening, Amfitheatrof said: "I am incredibly grateful to have been given the opportunity to create the jewelry and high jewelry collections for Louis Vuitton . After seven wonderful and intense years I am so proud of these collections and the legacy I leave behind as I embark on exciting new endeavors, which I will be announcing soon."
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Louis Vuitton did not respond to repeated requests for comment Wednesday.
The brand recruited the high-profile designer in April 2018 to oversee the design of the house's jewelry and timepieces, at a time when Louis Vuitton had trained its sights on invigorating the activity.
Amfitheatrof's recent high jewelry offering for the house was the 100-piece opening chapter of the "Awakened Hands, Awakened Minds" collection, with firsts including fully traceable rubies, a yellow LV Monogram star-cut diamond and a tiara. She unveiled the 11 themes in June 2024 in Saint-Tropez, for which she explored the 100 or so years that followed the French Revolution and ended with the 1901 Universal Exposition.
Louis Vuitton High Jewelry Awakened Worn Elegance Tiara
Another important recent launch under Amfitheatrof was the fine jewelry line for men , also last year. For that, she leveraged house codes and the playful personality of Vuitton's founder's grandson Gaston-Louis Vuitton in the 18-piece "Les Gastons Vuitton" collection.
The line was articulated around three personality traits of this "interesting character and was not talked about very much," Amfitheatrof told WWD at the time.
A globe-trotting designer born in Tokyo and trained at Central Saint Martins in London, Amfitheatrof was at the time of her hire at Louis Vuitton most recently known for her work heading the jewelry design team at Tiffany & Co. In 2013, she became the first woman to hold that position at the storied American label. She exited the company in January 2018, the same month Tiffany revealed Reed Krakoff would be the firm's chief artistic officer overseeing all product categories.
Amfitheatrof has also lived in Rome, Moscow, London and New York.
Her arrival at Louis Vuitton came less than a year after the brand opened its monumental flagship on the Place Vendôme in Paris. Anchoring the square dotted with high jewelers Boucheron, Van Cleef & Arpels, Chanel and Chaumet, another LMVH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned brand, the building also houses a high jewelry atelier for Vuitton.
Amfitheatrof broke into the fashion and art world with her own line of silver jewelry presented by Jay Jopling of the White Cube gallery in London in 1993.
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