Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs continue to fascinate Gaia Repossi. The American photographer, who passed away in 1987 and author of transgressive portraits, especially of the LGBT community, was at the center of a collection presented in 2021 by the Italian designer. A year later, the Paris-based designer (the Maison has entered the orbit of the LVMH group), proposes new pieces inspired by the work of the photographer, in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. The jewels are inspired not so much by photographs, but by the artist’s cultural context, reinterpreted in the minimal stylistic key of Gaia Repossi.
But not only. Because Mapplethorpe in the sixties had also created jewels himself or, more precisely, bijoux. Gaia Repossi was inspired by more than 150 references of the artist preserved in the archives of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York. They are necklaces of shells, pearls, crab claws, nails, nuts, parts of engines, made between 1965 and 1968 in New York.
He has worn several Patti Smith, his travel companion. The jewels in the Gaia Repossi collection are of different types: rings in mirror-polished white gold, but also in black gold, with a contrast that recalls the black & white images of the photographer. But there is no shortage of diamond necklaces. In all there are 11 new pieces divided into six themes, with names related to the work Robert Mapplethorpe: Dagger, Black x Cross, Bullseye, Relic, Chain and American Eagle.
