How Do You Keep an Icon Relevant Without Reinventing It?

Bvlgari has brought its Serpenti Infinito project to New York with auruBOROS, a monumental golden installation by the Berlin-based art duo Plastique Fantastique, set on the High Line at Little West 12th Street. The coiling structure translates Serpenti’s form to architectural scale and frames new high jewellery created for the project’s American chapter, with pieces inspired by Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Miami Art Deco and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim spiral. Open from 10 to 20 September, it is Bvlgari’s first major public commission in the United States and continues a journey that has taken the icon from Rome to Shanghai, Seoul and Mumbai.

Our View: The strongest icons do not stand still. They accumulate meaning.

Luxury houses spend decades building recognisable codes: a silhouette, a motif, a material, a colour, a monogram. Once a code is truly recognisable, a new problem appears. How do you keep using it without familiarity sliding into repetition?

Serpenti offers one answer. The serpent itself barely changes. What changes is the cultural setting around it.

Through Serpenti Infinito, Bvlgari has taken the icon from city to city and let each place shape its interpretation: Shanghai’s skyline, Seoul’s precision, Mumbai’s textile traditions. In New York, the serpent becomes an architectural intervention rising out of the urban landscape, while the new high jewellery draws on American art and architecture.

This is the difference between changing an icon and expanding its meaning. Bvlgari does not need to redesign Serpenti every time it wants the collection to feel current. Instead, it places the icon in new cultural conversations, using art, architecture and cities as the means. The code absorbs fresh references while remaining unmistakably Bvlgari.

That matters because heritage alone does not guarantee relevance. Many houses hold extraordinary archives, yet returning repeatedly to the same historical narratives can turn heritage into repetition. The opportunity lies in letting established codes meet contemporary culture, rather than simply reproducing the past.

Serpenti is particularly well suited to this, because transformation is already part of its symbolism. A snake sheds its skin, giving Bvlgari a natural narrative of renewal, and its coiled geometry moves easily between jewellery, watches, accessories, sculpture, and now, architecture.

auruBOROS takes the idea to an unusual scale. A motif normally worn around the wrist or neck becomes a place people can walk into. The product code becomes a cultural experience.

That changes the role of the icon. It is no longer only a commercial signature; it becomes a platform for working with artists, interpreting cultures and creating experiences beyond the usual boundaries of jewellery. It also suggests a broader way of thinking about heritage, not as something to keep looking back at, but as a stable foundation from which a brand can keep engaging with the present.

An icon’s longevity, in that sense, may depend less on preserving it untouched than on continually finding new contexts in which its meaning can grow.

Strategic Implication:

For houses with established icons, the opportunity may not be to create more brand codes, but to draw greater cultural depth from the strongest ones they already own.

That means going beyond repeated product variations. An icon can work as a creative platform across product, art, architecture, exhibitions, hospitality, digital experiences and cultural collaborations, provided its core identity remains recognisable.

The balance lies between continuity and reinterpretation. Too little change and the icon becomes predictable; too much and the link to the house weakens. Bvlgari’s approach suggests a third route: keep the core code constant and change the cultural lens through which people encounter it.

Place can be a particularly powerful lens. Rather than running an identical global campaign in every market, brands can let cities and cultures shape how they express an established code. Done with care, localisation becomes part of the brand’s creative evolution rather than a simple marketing adjustment.

Public cultural experiences also extend an icon beyond existing clients. On the High Line, people can encounter Serpenti without entering a boutique or buying anything. The role of physical brand experience shifts from point of sale towards cultural participation and world-building.

Strategic Question: How can an established icon keep accumulating new cultural meaning without losing the codes that made it iconic in the first place?

Source: The Jewellery Editor (Maria Doulton)