The Piedmontese designer’s new collection is inspired by the concept of travel and the allure of large American trucks.
In Valenza, for years, she developed jewelry collections for brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Asprey, de Grisogono, De Beers, Tiffany, Bulgari, and American companies such as Bailey, Banks and Biddle, Mayors, and JLG. Then, Francesca Villa called it quits. But not with jewelry: she decided to create jewelry for herself, under her own brand. After many travels and relocations, she returned to the small village of Solonghello near Valenza. Far from the noise of big cities, yet so close to the world. Francesca Villa’s specialty, in fact, is time travel. Her passion for travel is also reflected in the On the Road collection: unique, limited-edition brooches and necklaces depicting trucks. The designer drew inspiration from pop culture objects linked to the concept of freedom of movement and the mythology of the American road trip. The brooches are made of 18-karat gold with titanium, semi-precious stones, enamel and details of diamonds and coloured gems.
In her travels she buys objects and figures from other eras and uses them for her collections, which are flanked by more traditional jewels, with gold and precious gems. One could say that the designer lives in the present with jewels like her jewels like spheres and triangles, and in the past with the Object Trouvé, unique pieces that become precious for the story they bring inside. “I recognize these fragments of their evocative power, because an object always refers to a subject, to us, to our lost and rediscovered time”, is her philosophy. ” It is therefore from the union between objéts trouvés and precious materials, through the skilful work of Italian master goldsmiths, that the jewel that I conceived is born and develops, an unexpected union between worlds far away but from whose union blossoms an unrepeatable object, that of its uniqueness makes an absolute value”.
