Among the many things I thought I’d never find myself doing, designing a jewellery line with a Picasso was high on the list. Diana Widmaier-Picasso – art historian, granddaughter of Pablo and possessor of what must be the most delicious giggle in the entirety of Paris – floated the idea that I might come up with a line of men’s jewellery for her company Menē, for which, alongside her many occupations (writing books, curating exhibitions, acting as one of the guardians of her grandfather’s creative legacy), she serves as chief artistic officer.
Menē is what happens when bullion decides it would rather live on the body than lie comatose in a vault. Using 24-carat gold and PT999 platinum, instead of the usual commercial alchemy, whereby the cost of a modest quantity of precious metal is magnified by the magic of a name, Menē makes its value structure explicit. It is investment jewellery in the literal, rather than marketing, sense.
The pricing mechanism is the brand’s centre of gravity: constantly changing weight- and marketbased, the displayed price of the item is broken down into metal price and Menē fee (designing, manufacturing etc.).
Now, I am all about signed jewellery. If a bracelet bears the name Cartier, Van Cleef, Piaget, Fred Paris, Boucheron and so on, I am immediately wafted off to a dreamland of 20th-century Gallic sophistication in which objects for everyday use were fashioned from precious metals as a matter of course. But conceptually, Menē reaches further back, to a time when jewellery was a form of instantly accessible, wearable purchasing power. That feeling of human proximity to tangible value has been gradually eroded as financial instruments (paper currency, bankers’ drafts, cheques, credit cards, tap-and-go) have put ever more barriers between us and the metallic foundations upon which our modern notions of wealth are based.
By working with Menē, I was actually going further back into history than even the grand names of the Place Vendôme. Widmaier-Picasso’s brief to me was disarmingly simple: she explained that there were nowhere near enough expensive items available on the Menē website – a failing that she felt I was well qualified to correct. I set about thinking about things that I would like to own and wear, but which I couldn’t afford in their branded manifestation.
Nick Foulkes x Menē Large Lighter Holder, available in both 24-carat gold and pure platinum, POA, mene.com
Bracelets came first. I love the drape of a good, heavy curb-link bracelet worn louchely and loosely. There is something very decadent about the catenary curve formed by the excess links that hang below the wrist bone; it recalls for me the underworld nightclub owners in classic Alain Delon vehicles such as Le Samouraï (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970). In the end we settled on two designs. One with alternating short and long rounded links, the other, in platinum, having a slightly more angular profile to the links, one side polished and the other engraved.
My fondness for rings is well documented. I wore them as a child, abandoned them for most of my 20s and 30s, and only returned to them a little over 20 years ago when a dear friend presented me with a cameo ring depicting Socrates. Since then, many others have come and gone from my digits, but Socrates has always remained. He has now been translated from hardstone to metal, in this case platinum.
However, the pièce de résistance has got to be the solid-gold Nick Foulkes x Menē disposable lighter holder. It may be the most reassuring object in the world – its pistol-grip case and around 190 grams of precious metal conferring on the most banal of disposable lighters the beauty of 24-carat gold and the reassurance of tangible weight in the hand.
It is quite simply the most outrageous object. Just writing about it makes me smile and I hope gives Widmaier-Picasso an opportunity to giggle.