Ancient Egypt, But Make It Fashion

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,” Steve Martin’s “King Tut,” The Mummy: In a way, we can blame them all on Napoléon. Militarily, the French dictator’s 1798 invasion of Egypt was a disaster. But culturally, says Peter Der Manuelian, Barbara Bell professor of Egyptology at Harvard University, the bungled operation inspired an entire field. The French scientists and scholars who flocked to the Nile’s shores led to Champollion’s deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, Dubois’s illustrations of Egyptian deities, and the creation of the actual book on Egypt—one that led Westerners to regard the ancient civilization as a repository of vast riches and sophisticated culture, the whole “pharaohs marrying their own sisters” thing notwithstanding.

By the end of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th, much of Europe had mummy issues. There was a frenzy for sphinxes, sarcophagi, and hieroglyphics. Excavations in the Nile Valley, Middle Egypt, and Tanis unearthed antiquities that inspired artisans and collectors alike. Van Cleef & Arpels was among many who took note. Back in the 1920s, the French jeweler was still in its infancy—at least relative to some of Paris’s more staid jewelry houses. But its modern approach, bullish technique, and imaginative design quickly helped it climb to the zenith of the Place Vendôme. Shortly after the discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922, Van Cleef & Arpels created its Egyptian Pattern jewelry, deftly crafting Art Deco–style diamond and onyx pieces that used rubies, emeralds, and sapphires to represent gods and artifacts. A century later, the house has returned to this font of creativity: the symbols, the colors, the pantheon, the wrists bent at a 90-degree angle.

This summer the brand will unveil its Fascinating Egypt collection, featuring 180 pieces that pay homage to the region’s culture and craftsmanship as well as Van Cleef & Arpels’s own history. The release follows the opening of the new Grand Egyptian Museum—in, yes, the actual Egypt—which hosts the artifacts of Tutankhamun himself. The discovery of his tomb sent Egyptomania to a fever pitch and had influenced the maison when it designed its first related pieces. Take the newly designed Paysage éternel bracelet, a piece that reads more like a detailed painting made of rectangular gold panels set with sapphires, rubies, and diamonds instead of oil on canvas. Its imagery is drawn from the Egyptian craze of the early 20th century. Items from King Tut’s tomb eventually traveled the world, finally arriving in America in the 1970s and transferring that original European excitement farther west. “That was really the first blockbuster exhibition that started this whole tradition of Monets going on the road and people lining up around the building. It was Tutankhamun that was the beginning of all of that,” says Der Manuelian.