The new high-end jew­elry col­lec­tion by Louis Vuit­ton, enti­tled Bla­son, is designed by producer/singer-songwriter Phar­rell Williams, the house’s own jew­elry designer, Camille Miceli and under the direc­tion (really?) of Marc Jacobs. The col­lec­tion can be seen at www.louisvuitton.com. It’s bold, gem-y and most unfortunately…clichéd. And if that is point to these designs, well then please pass me a glass of Amer­i­can brut, and we can toast to slick inau­then­tic­ity and com­mer­cial­ism. The video of the col­lec­tion shows Mr. Williams sit­ting before the jew­els and review­ing them as Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies with more than a dash of pomp-and-circumstance. He even shows us how the medal­lion of a ring flips and reverses. Ah, ver­sa­til­ity in jew­elry, now there’s an orig­i­nal thought! Of course this idea was devel­oped back dur­ing the Renais­sance, but no mat­ter, it’s got an LV logo and a few gems, and so voilà , it’s new and won­der­ful again. For­give me, but I think not.

The col­lec­tion includes such “sculp­tural” pieces as hefty gold hoop ear­rings, the shape of which you would eas­ily find on 47^th Street—yet, again, bear­ing that promi­nent LV logo that serves to sep­a­rate it from its pedes­trian cousins. Please cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but I thought logos were no-go’s these days. LV has gone to great lengths—and has uti­lized the skill of enor­mously tal­ented artists—to cre­ate bags where the logo isn’t sim­ply a bygone sta­tus sym­bol but an inte­grated ele­ment of an attrac­tive design. Dig­nity and grace shouldn’t be for­saken when it comes to updat­ing a ven­er­a­ble house and LV suc­cess­fully made that tran­si­tion with their bags and Jacobs’ elo­quent designs. Their jew­elry line should also reflect this same phi­los­o­phy, yet sadly, it seems to have no real rela­tion­ship to the rest of its products.

Masonic sym­bols, diamond-encrusted crowns, fleur-de-lis, and a jewel-bearing cherub com­plete the lex­i­con of motifs that Jacobs put his stamp of approval on. All of which ref­er­ence royalty–French, of course–and the divine (per­haps hon­or­ing the heav­ens above is no acci­dent here). Now I do not blame any jew­elry designer for attempt­ing to tap into these themes–they are tal­is­manic and endur­ing. However…these pieces look more like repro­duc­tion jew­elry that’s try­ing much too hard than a cool adap­ta­tion that gives us a con­tem­po­rary twist on an old con­cept. Jacobs did this recently with his “mod­ernist” inspired designs, which I thought were great. I have said before that Jacobs can design prac­ti­cally anything—he has an orig­i­nal­ity that can­not be con­tained by the houses for which he works. So I have to ask, why this col­lec­tion and why such a com­mer­cial endeavor? Of course, he could respond with a sim­ple, “Why not?” and shine that mes­mer­iz­ing grin he often leaves us with at the end of one of his bril­liant shows, thus allow­ing us to pon­der the answer our­selves. And if I were him this time, I might do exactly that.