In keeping with its Italian heritage, Bvlgari maintains a constant dialogue between history, art, and contemporary creation. Roman at its core, the Maison has, since its origins, drawn on ancient culture and artisanal savoir-faire to shape objects in which time becomes a true aesthetic material. It is within this spirit that the Maglia Milanese Monete takes its place, unveiled at LVMH Watch Week, an exceptional event held in Milan that has, in just a few years, become a strategic platform where the creative and technical directions of luxury watchmaking are expressed.
This philosophy finds its latest embodiment in the Maglia Milanese Monete, a reinterpretation of the Monete watch from the 1960s. The piece preserves one of Bvlgari’s most distinctive signatures: the integration of an ancient Roman coin; here, a denarius bearing the likeness of Emperor Caracalla, affirming the Maison’s intimate relationship with Antiquity. This historical reference is far from ornamental; it reflects a vision of time as cultural material, where past and present coexist and overlap. The watch is powered by the Piccolissimo calibre, an in-house micro-movement developed by Bvlgari, symbolising the Maison’s technical mastery of miniaturised movements designed to serve an expressive and exacting vision of high jewellery watchmaking.
At the heart of this creation, the Milanese mesh occupies a central role. For the first time in its history, Bvlgari incorporates this ancestral technique into a jewellery watch. Originating in Milan during the Renaissance, the Milanese mesh is distinguished by its construction of finely interwoven gold threads, offering exceptional suppleness and an almost organic level of comfort. Long associated with jewellery and goldsmithing, it finds a new horological expression here, where the bracelet becomes a living, fluid surface, almost textile in nature. Paired with the Monete secret watch, it creates a subtle dialogue between texture, material, and symbolism, reinforcing the idea of an object designed as much to be worn as to be contemplated.
Through the Maglia Milanese Monete, Bvlgari does more than revisit an icon. The Maison asserts a vision of luxury in which Italian artisanal gesture, Roman memory, and Swiss watchmaking innovation are woven together with coherence. More than a watch, this creation stands as an aesthetic and cultural statement, true to Bvlgari’s enduring ability to anchor its creations within the long continuum of history and craftsmanship.
