Carolina Bucci

For many buyers it is, because you are paying for both meaning and craft. The Lucky bracelet was Bucci's reinvention of the friendship bracelets she made as a child, now hand-woven from gold and silk threads. It is the piece that arguably launched her, and Bucci credits its appearance in Sex and the City with broadening her career as a designer.

The Lucky bracelet is the natural entry point and the brand's signature. It carries the friendship-bracelet story at the heart of the house and shows off the woven gold-and-silk technique that defines her work. From there, collectors often move into her Woven collection or pieces finished with her hammered Florentine Finish.

The Florentine Finish is Bucci's signature gold-hammering technique, a textured surface that catches the light and runs throughout her collections. It is distinctive enough that she introduced it to Audemars Piguet, applying it to their Frosted Gold Royal Oak watches in their collaborations.

Yes, and the lineage is central to the brand. Carolina Bucci is the fourth generation of her family's fine jewellers, a line that began when her great-grandfather Ferdinando Bucci opened a Florence workshop repairing gentlemen's pocket watches before moving into bespoke gold chains and then fine jewellery. Carolina is the first woman to lead the family company.

The jewellery is anchored in the family's Florentine workshops in Florence, Italy, where the manufacture has stayed even as the business grew internationally. Carolina herself was born in Florence in 1976 and now lives between London and New York.

Woven is one of the first collections Bucci launched after returning to Florence, alongside Lucky. It reinterprets centuries-old Florentine textile looms to weave together gold and silk threads, turning a traditional craft technique into fine jewellery.

She did, twice. In 2016 she reworked the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak with her Florentine Finish to mark the watch's 40th anniversary, and in 2018 she applied the finish again to a Limited Edition Royal Oak in 18k yellow gold with a silver-toned mirror dial in place of the traditional Tapisserie.

Yes, she has extended her aesthetic into objects and homeware. In 2018 she launched the FORTE beads collection at the Couture Jewelry Show in Las Vegas, and in 2019 she released hand-blown glasses made with Murano maker Laguna B, hand-carved Carrara marble spheres, and homeware pieces wearing her Florentine Finish.

A selection of her designs sits in the permanent jewellery collection of the Palazzo Pitti museum in Florence, which speaks to how her work is regarded. For shopping, she opened her London flagship in 2007, relocated it to 22 Motcomb Street in 2018, and opened her first Florence flagship in July 2023.

Because pieces like the Lucky bracelet combine fine gold chain with woven silk, treat the silk as the more delicate element and keep it from snagging. The gold work is built in the family's Florentine workshops to last, so with reasonable care these are pieces meant to be worn and kept for years.