Van Cleef & Arpels

The Alhambra line is the entry point most people fall for, and it tends to hold its appeal because it is recognisable, wearable and carries the weight of a house founded in 1896. You are paying for genuine high-jewellery heritage and craftsmanship, not just a logo. Whether the price suits you comes down to budget and how much you value owning a piece from one of France's most storied jewellers.

It is a French high-jewellery house in the truest sense, with craftsmanship and material standards built up since 1896. The pieces use fine gemstones and demanding techniques, and the brand's prestige is reinforced by a client list of royalty and screen icons. A single illustration of that artistry: a 1936 piece made with the house's Mystery Setting sold for $326,500 at Christie's New York in 2009.

It is the technique the house is most celebrated for, a way of setting gemstones so closely that no metal prongs show, leaving an unbroken surface of colour. Its prestige is no secret to collectors: a 1936 Van Cleef & Arpels piece with a Mystery Setting sold for $326,500 at a Christie's New York auction in 2009. The effect is what separates the house's work from ordinary fine jewellery.

The house's pieces often feature flowers, animals and fairies, a poetic, nature-led vocabulary that has run through its designs for over a century. That romantic storytelling is central to the brand's identity and helped earn it grand prize at the 1925 International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts for a bracelet of rubies and diamonds fashioned as red and white roses.

It was founded in 1896 in Paris, France by Alfred Van Cleef and Salomon Arpels. In 1906 the house opened its first boutique at 22 Place Vendôme, across from the Hôtel Ritz, where its flagship still stands today, the address that has become synonymous with the brand.

Alfred Van Cleef, a Dutch diamond-cutter, founded the house with Salomon Arpels in 1896. After Salomon's death, Alfred and two of the Arpels brothers, Charles and Julien, acquired the Place Vendôme space in 1906, and the third brother, Louis, joined in 1913, cementing the Van Cleef and Arpels partnership in the name.

Van Cleef & Arpels has been part of the Swiss luxury group Richemont since 1999. The house's longtime head, Nicolas Bos, led it from 2013 and was appointed CEO of Richemont in 2024, a sign of how central the maison is within the group.

Yes, repeatedly. The house was charged with making the crown of Queen Nazli of Egypt in the 1930s, and in 1966 created the crown of Empress Farah Pahlavi for her 1967 coronation. The Iranian crown took eleven months and was set with 36 emeralds, 36 rubies, 105 pearls and 1,469 diamonds, all selected from the Imperial Treasury without leaving the country.

Its jewellery has been worn by an extraordinary roll-call of style icons and royalty, including Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Diana, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth Taylor and the Duchess of Windsor. That heritage of dressing the most photographed women in the world is a large part of the brand's enduring allure.

In 1940, when the house expanded to the Western Hemisphere and opened its flagship at 744 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where it has remained ever since. That boutique was fully redesigned in 2013 to match the elegance of the Paris store, and the house today operates standalone US boutiques in cities from Beverly Hills to Miami.

As a first high-jewellery purchase, many people gravitate to the most iconic, wearable designs from a house this established, since recognisable pieces from a maison founded in 1896 tend to be the easiest to live with and to pass on. Buy what you will actually wear, ideally from an official boutique so provenance is never in question, and treat it as a long-term keepsake rather than a short-term flip.