ART OF PREPARATION

Arriving for my interview with couture jewelry designer Anna Hu, rounding Fifth Avenue at 58th Street, I am reminded that The Plaza Hotel reflects exquisite dreams into a New Yorker’s soul as were it a Loire Valley Chateau echoing visually into a pleasant country waterway.   The Plaza’s towering French renaissance mansard with its loggias, balconies, gables and majestic fenestration, the rounded corner turrets, the marble base and street level picture windows with their proud brass sills; we feel these architectural elements as a stage set for some of our most refined and extravagant fantasies.   In darkest night inside this landmarked masterpiece, Enrico Caruso attacked a tick, tick, ticking Magneta mantle clock, in so doing ripping out the rest of The Plaza’s timepieces, all interconnected back when.   And it is small wonder Ernest Hemingway advised F. Scott Fitzgerald that he could well leave his heart to this sumptuous hotel.

                  In our era, if you want a diamond as beautiful as The Plaza, you can go within The Plaza, to The Retail Collection, where Anna Hu Haute Joaillerie is an essential destination for a particularly soignée set.  Suffice it to say that Madonna wore Anna Hu to the 2009 Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Gala, whereas Drew Barrymore sported an Anna Hu pearl ring and earrings at the Emmy Awards. 

                  Hu’s vision for her flagship venue, elegantly elaborated with Frederic Zonsius and Eladio Victoria of the New York design firm FZAD , was that of a Shangri-La of precious stones.   The boutique’s façade features the Anna Hu logo, stenciled in gold leaf, including a ruyi, a Chinese symbol for a long and prosperous life.  Curving front doors cocoon the rarified interior with its upholstered silk panels in contemporary colors, tone on tone grays, some of them textured, and it whites and marbles and beiges. 

"ICY GRAPES" earnings from the Monet's Giverny Garden Collection

Natural colored sapphires, emerald, ruby, and diamonds, 28 carats with pear-shaped drop Emeralds.

 

Persephone-Necklace by Anna Hu Haute Joaillerie