One of the modern luxury jewelry industry’s greatest success stories is the Van Cleef & Arpels Alhambra. Alhambra isn’t so much a single product as it is a collection of watches and jewelry items that use Van Cleef & Arpels’ signature clover-style motif. The Alhambra collection was originally debuted over 55 years ago in 1968, and the reason for choosing this four-leaf clover shape is, of course, to emphasize luck. The company of “poetic complication” is also into “poetic emotions.” Will wearing solid gold four-leaf clovers bring you luck? That is up to the wearer to decide, but being able to afford Van Cleef & Arpels luxuries probably means you have already had a good experience with luck in your life already. So, in that regard, we can interpret the Alhambra as being a signal of existing luck, as opposed to being a totemic hope for future fortune.
One of the latest new Van Cleef & Arpels Sweet Alhambra watches is the simply named Sweet Alhambra Agate, which is part of a collection that also includes some jewelry items such as the matching Vintage Alhambra Reversible Ring. These are typified by an 18k yellow gold construction, mixed with alternating gold machine-engraved guilloche decoration and blue agate stonework. The rich blue and gold tones are a beautiful combination and add flavor, as opposed to serious novelty, in the Alhambra timepiece collection.
This particular style of Van Cleef & Arpels watch that uses a bracelet chain of connected clovers is known as the Sweet Alhambra (which, according to the company, originally debuted in 1998). Van Cleef & Arpels makes many other versions that incorporate other colors of gold such as 18K rose gold, as well as other natural materials such as mother-of-pearl or red carnelian. The Alhambra clover segment which serves as the timekeeping dial is a bit larger than the other links, and measures 22.7mm wide (the same size tall), and is water resistant to 30 meters with a sapphire crystal over the dial. The case contains a simple Swiss Made quartz movement to indicate the time via hours and minutes using eye-pleasing dauphine-style hands. The dial is, however, on the harder side to read the time precisely, especially if you aren’t aware of the current hour. There is always going to be a utilitarian compromise when merging watch dials and organic attractive shapes that aren’t strictly circles.
Much of the luxury value comes in the hand-finished decoration work, which includes the small beading around the edges of the clover shapes. This is a careful manual process, and I’ve never seen this effect replicated by machinery (yet). Each section of the watch and bracelet chain is decorated and polished by hand, and the stone selection is also entirely manual. These products aren’t cheap, but they excel in quality and beauty which is part of why Van Cleef & Arpels is enjoying such an illustrious moment in popularity right now.
What many will also tell you is how comfortable and stylish watches like the Sweet Alhambra are. These watches are also practical, given that they tell the time, but also look mostly like elegant bracelets. The watch industry has long tried to create women’s timepieces that look like jewelry but also tell the time, often yielding awkward compromise products that don’t do either task well. The Van Cleef & Arpels Alhambra watches are a notable exception, in that these flawlessly wear as lightweight bracelets but also offer the time. Even though Van Cleef & Arpels has a number of exceptional (and exceptionally complicated) mechanical women’s watches, having a small and simple quartz movement makes much more sense in a product like the Sweet Alhambra.
The combination of beautiful forms, poetic elegance, decoration techniques, and overall prestige make items like the Van Cleef & Arpels very popular as well as desirable. This is a very effective rubric for how to make a successful modern luxury women’s watch, and Van Cleef & Arpels does it very well. Price for the Van Cleef & Arpels Sweet Alhambra Blue Agate watch is $18,600 USD. Learn more at the Van Cleef & Arpels website.
