Meet Lucia Silvestri, Bvlgari’s charming, effervescent creative director and the woman behind the brand’s most magnificent pieces.

“Gems,” declares Lucia Silvestri, “make me happy. When I open a parcel and I see a stone I like, I say, ‘buon giorno’ [good day]. I talk to them! But when I’m with a client, I become very cold. I show no emotion. My colleagues who know me say that I’m a good actress!” she adds, laughing.

Silvestri isn’t an eccentric; she’s the creative director of Bvlgari, responsible not only for the design of the house’s phenomenal High Jewellery collections such as MVSA and Diva, but also its more accessible lines such as the bestselling B.zero1 and Serpenti. It’s also her job to scour the globe’s major gem hubs and auction houses for the best stones to procure.

“It’s important to have a good feeling with gems,” she says, explaining how she combines emotional instinct with pragmatic professionalism. “My job is divided in two parts: One is feminine, delicate and creative; and the other is very business like, where I ‘fight’ with men because the gemstone market is a men’s market. I started when I was very young, and by now [the men] know that I’m much stronger than them.”

We are in the Bvlgari offices in Rome, an austere, brown-brick building overlooking the River Tiber that looks nothing like what you would imagine the headquarters of one of the world’s most glamorous jewellers to be. In a room simply furnished with a large conference table and ergonomic chairs, Silvestri holds court, showing the small clutch of journalists gathered her stunning emerald-and-diamond necklace. It is known as The Seven Wonders for its seven large, circular Colombian emeralds totalling 118.46 carats. These are surrounded by marquise and brilliant-cut diamonds.

“Do you like it? It’s beautiful, no? I wore it especially for all of you today,” she coos, charming the audience like a veteran songbird at a concert. Created in 1961, the necklace is a piece she borrowed from (ex-chairman) Paolo Bvlgari’s private collection, but the rest of her trinkets — bracelets, bangles, rings and earrings, in various shades of gold, and with a smattering of diamonds and pearls — are all her own. It’s clear that she loves what she does.

Inspiration, she informs us, can strike anywhere and at any time — during her travels abroad, or simply walking around in Rome — but it’s here in this room, “with this light, the view and the atmosphere”, that all those bits and pieces come together to form a whole. Indeed, the conference table is strewn with polished gems of all varieties (Bvlgari only buys finished stones; if recutting is required, the stones are sent to a local gem cutter). Some are still in their packaging; others, laid out on stone tablets alongside sketches of their final design.

It can take up to five years to design a piece. “The process is [long], because you really have to think about how you can use the gems. They are really rare, and you have to [balance] the mixture of coloured stones and diamonds. It’s something that takes time. Like this piece,” she says, indicating a necklace made of different coloured stones. “Collecting the gems alone took three years. I bought one in an auction, three in New York, one in Jaipur, one in Hong Kong… And then when we think we have enough gems, we start to work.”

It might sound like Silvestri has the best job in the world, but it’s not as if she has an unlimited budget to purchase whatever she likes. In fact, it was Paolo Bvlgari who advised her never to buy a gem without first thinking about how and where it could be used.

Silvestri met Paolo and his brother Nicola when she took up a temporary position filling in for a Bvlgari staff on maternity leave. “When I entered the office, there was a big table like this… full of gems. I was 19 years old, and fell immediately in love with gems. [Paolo] understood this, because I touched the gems in a very natural way, without being scared of them. I started to play with them, and he understood that I was connected to them in some way. At the end of four months, he said he could see me [working in the company full-time] and that he wanted to teach me everything about gems.”

Silvestri was still in school at the time, so she had to convince her parents that she had found her passion. “It’s important to have passion for what you do; without passion, you can’t have emotion.” They relented, and she took up Bvlgari’s offer. That was 35 years ago. Today she heads a team of designers. “I work with my team with the same passion. Sometimes, we have meetings in a piazza, or in a bar while eating pizza. We talk about colours and new ideas. It’s very dolce vita!”

The colours in Rome are special, Silvestri says, betraying a sensitivity to hues. It’s no surprise, then, that her favourite gem is the sapphire, which comes in virtually all shades of the rainbow. It’s a versatile stone that can be used in combination with any other stones. Even her lucky charm — a stone that she keeps in her bag at all times — is a sapphire. The story behind how she found this talisman is intriguing.

“I was in Sri Lanka on vacation. The resort was full of honeymooners, but I was alone. Nobody at the hotel knew what my job was, but someone [from the gem market] knew I was staying there and the [local gem traders] started coming to the resort. I had a big queue of Sinhalese men lining up to show me their stones! One of them had a mauve sapphire, which, under the sun, shone like a star. I knew then that it was my stone, and I bought it. It was not expensive. I call it the stone with a secret, because you can only see the star in certain positions. Under the sun, it’s really magical.”

Silvestri has many stories like this from her gem-hunting expeditions. It would fill many pages in a book, we offer. “A lot of people ask me why I haven’t written a book. So maybe I will. It will be a very long story!” she quips. A story, no doubt, that will find many fans, both gem-lovers and otherwise.

Besides chronicling developments in the luxury watch industry, Aaron De Silva also runs The Time Traveller SG on Instagram (@thetimetravellersg) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/thetimetravellersg)

This article appeared in the Options of Issue 726 (May 2) of The Edge Singapore.