CONVERSATION STARTER: For Destrée cofounder and creative director Géraldine Guyot, being invited for a collaboration with Bulgari felt like a full-circle moment.

“My mom has been collecting pieces since I was young and so I’ve always been obsessed with the brand,” she told WWD at the unveiling of the Bulgari Serpentine top-handle “In conversation with Géraldine Guyot” handbag on Friday.

It is the first of a new Serpenti In Conversation collaboration series for the Roman jeweler.

As is customary today, the conversation began on Instagram, when Bulgari’s chief executive officer Jean-Christophe Babin slid into her DMs to suggest connecting her with the team led by leather goods and accessories creative director Mary Katrantzou, Guyot recalled.

The French designer headed to Florence with a raft of sketches for a first appointment that turned from 90-minute time slot to afternoon-long conversation.

When they got down to the bag business, Katrantzou said it was about seeing what Guyot would connect with first.

“And she was drawn to the Serpentine, which is a huge compliment because [it] was born from my first collaboration with Bulgari,” Katrantzou continued. “So it became a 360 [degree] moment.”

Before being tapped to design the Roman jeweler’s leather goods and accessories, Katrantzou took part in the brand’s “Serpenti Through the Eyes of” collaboration series initiated in 2017, which is now evolving into the new series.  

The result of their afternoon-long chat is a version of the top-handle purse with its sinuous handle further spiraling into a braided outline inspired by passementerie trims used in couture.

Out of all the options, “this was one quite dear to my heart,” said Guyot. Not only did it result in a Bulgari snake more modern and abstract but braided trims are also a Destrée signature, for example used as the central motif on the French label’s bestselling Gunther bag.

Plus, finding out Bulgari had created passementerie-inspired necklaces in the 1980s added to Guyot’s impression of a full-circle moment, she said.

While its twisting outline is the most striking novelty in the curvilinear brass handle imagined with Guyot, its lightness is also a talking point. That was achieved thanks to an innovative electroforming technique, a process akin to 3D printing that sees brass deposited on a resin base, which is then plated in gold.

“What I always say is that today’s innovation is tomorrow’s heritage, and yesterday’s innovation became the heritage we talk today,” said Katrantzou. “We always try with each project, whether it’s a collaboration or the [main] collection, to really push forward the techniques and innovation to make designs feel precise, but also light and wearable.”

Available from Friday at selected Bulgari boutiques around the world, the Bulgari Serpentine top-handle bag is limited to 300 pieces. It comes in two sizes, the small offered in two colors of satin retailing for 3,800 euros and a larger version in chocolate nubuck or cream smooth leather that is priced at 4,500 euros.