PARIS — What’s a milestone celebration without an exuberant display evoking the idea of bursting with joy?

Fendi continued its centenary by unveiling “Eaux d’Artifice,” a high jewelry collection whose name plays on the French word for fireworks and which pays homage to Rome with designs taking their cues from the manifold water features of its hometown.

“High jewelry for Fendi is the most intimate voice,” Delfina Delettrez Fendi, artistic director of jewelry at the Roman house, said in an exclusive interview. “It expresses the most poetic and also the most surreal side of the brand, where the identities are whispered rather than declared.”

From this initial contrast sprang a through line of duality that had the designer and fourth-generation scion of the Roman family name envision pairings that included her desire to make the precision of craftsmanship to be palpable while honoring “those invisible hands behind the visible beauty”; the Eternal City’s ability to “choreograph elegance” and stage beauty, and “Roman strength and feminine complexity.”

The 1954 “Eaux d’Artifice” experimental short film by American avant garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger, which sees a mysterious feminine figure stroll in the fountain-filled gardens of the 16th-century Villa d’Este near Rome, became the main inspiration guiding Delettrez Fendi.

“This movie has been sitting in the back of my brain since always,” she said. “Every time I thought about illusion, about perspective, and the play on perspective I [thought] about that movie.”

Its visuals centered on water arcing in crystalline bursts dovetailed into her desire to play with the idea of controlled fireworks in honor of the house’s celebration — and the Roman fountains that have been part of her visual landscape throughout her life.

“I wanted to capture the strength inside of soft lines,” she continued. “And I was also thinking about inheritance in general; how water, just like my name, somehow flows from one generation to the next.” 

And what better form factor than a diamond to pack such wealth of rich inspirations into?

The 20.25-carat fancy vivid yellow one at the center of the Eaux d’Artifice anniversary necklace was certainly cut for the job, right down to its weight intentionally matching the milestone year.

It took pride of place on a high-collar architecture of metal and gemstones emphasizing the neck and shoulders. Figuring jets of water springing from pools turned oval by perspective, arches also reminiscent of its headquarters seem to burst to life against the skin.

In addition to the 116-carats’ worth of white gems, another 100 fancy vivid yellow pear-shaped diamonds, totaling more than 27 carats, figured the final water drops on each arch, some also carrying the “hidden” F outline that serve as a quasi-family crest in the Roman house’s high jewelry.

Some of Delettrez Fendi’s ideas spilled over onto another three sets and a trio of cocktail rings that also made up the anniversary lineup.

“Since it’s a collection that marks Fendi’s centenary, there was of course an expectation of extravagance, so I wanted to somehow subvert the idea of extravagance — or of celebrations — as something super loud and colorful,” Delettrez Fendi said. “I wanted something more mysterious, more reflective, much like Rome also.”

Taking a monochromatic approach “allowed [her] to put more focus and more drama in the details” but also drew the eye to the architectural quality of the designs.

The 100 fountains of the Villa d’Este inspired the Cento set but their sprays became a 3D symmetrical frieze on the neck, with a sapphire gradient leading the eye to a 7-carat cushion-cut sapphire and 3-carat diamond. Rock crystal cabochons laid over diamond-paved elements amplified the impression of water drops landing on the necklace — and made minute sparklers even more prominent.

Her designs leaned away from the figurative with the Sunset rings, their sizable imperial topaz, yellow sapphire or spinel center stones held in swirls of gold. Even further went the ruby-adorned Fortuna set, where the hypnotic flow of water turned abstract. With both came the idea of water taking colors from the sky and other elements, rather than keeping to an expected palette.

It was a reminder that for all the decades of history the Roman house carries, it is still young as a high jeweler — and that’s how Delettrez Fendi likes it.

“This is what Fendi is to me. It doesn’t want to replicate the past, it wants to transform it, even if it’s a collection inspired by Roman fountains,” she said. “I always say Fendi reminds me of the future.”