Style Edit: How Pomellato keeps its haute designs as wearable, timeless and contemporary as the Italian jewellery house’s ready-to-wear pieces, and what drives its ‘Free Gems’ campaign
- As Pomellato’s creative director Vincenzo Castaldo explains, the house’s minimalist Nudo collection, created in 2001, continues to resonate with a new generation
- Gem master Stefano Cortecci says the best way to discover Pomellato jewellery is by touch, as the gems’ surfaces are irregular; many of the brand’s customers are women buying their own jewellery too
How does it feel to transform a personal passion project into the work of a lifetime?
Sitting down with Vincenzo Castaldo and Stefano Cortecci, the creative director and gem master of Italian jewellery house Pomellato, we can sense the palpable joy these two have for what they do for a living, as well as the near 60-year-old legacy of the brand they work for.
“Trying to bring the heritage in each single piece, sometimes it’s not so easy,” says Cortecci. “We don’t have any formula,” Castaldo adds. “From my point of view, you don’t have clearly in mind what gems you’re looking for. You prefer to be driven by your emotion, by the colours, by the shapes.”
“In a way, it’s like when you’re looking for a partner,” Castaldo continues, describing the creative foundation he and Cortecci have laid out over their past 20 or so years at the house. “Maybe when you meet someone, you say, OK, this could be the right one. It’s the same path, the same process. You have to find your own something, create something special.”
Palpable joy best describes the philosophy this creative duo has for the brand, as well as their experimental, free-spirited approach to jewellery design – the driving force behind Pomellato’s Free Gems campaign. Castaldo and Cortecci ooze with the youthful energy of creatives who are just getting started in their careers, rather than the long-time veterans of the craft and trade they actually are. Together, the pair has pioneered a new chapter for Pomellato classics like the ever-popular Nudo and Sabbia lines, and launched the house’s first-ever high jewellery collection.
Castaldo likens venturing into the world of high jewellery to a “workout for creativity” when reflecting on the opportunity to launch the brand’s first collection back in 2020. Four years later, Castaldo and Cortecci are now working on their fifth. “We are quite young – teenagers,” Castaldo laughs. “High jewellery is an opportunity to play with creativity in a very free way, because you don’t have any constriction of limit in terms of stones – you can even use one of a kind. You don’t have any limit or specific target to reach.”
