The Sustainable and Low-Cost Auction

Can an auction house founded in London in 1744 stay forever young, still being attractive and inspirational even for a public accustomed to dialoguing through non-tangible ecosystems? Sotheby's has found the solution. The guest curator at its Luxury Edit auction in London, New York and Paris will be the young and enterprising jewelry designer Maria Sole Ferragamo, who, with her brand SO-LE Studio, makes jewelry from recycled leather and has created new items for this project, inspired by the architecture of the auction’s three host cities. The aim: to focus on sustainability in order to attract the new generations by introducing affordable objects. «Sotheby's considers my way of designing jewelry extremely innovative and close to young people because I like to give new life to discarded materials that I find in factories and transform them into wearable pieces of art. Creating with things that already exist makes my approach unique because I see opportunities where others would see scarcity, » says Maria Sole Ferragamo. «For me, it is not the price that defines a luxury product and my collections confirm it because they challenge the concept of internal value attributed to a material or object. Transforming and honoring an abandoned resource is more precious than anything else, a true luxury.» In this project as the curator for Sotheby's, Maria Sole will also present a list of designers defined as “cultural pioneers”, such as the late Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton, as well as antique jewelry from historic companies such as Cartier. «Luxury for me is synonymous with longevity and in this respect, jewelry is a great source of inspiration because, unlike fashion, it is timeless and less dependent on trends. I like the fact that second-hand iconic objects maintain their cult status without ever losing their inner beauty and, when I design, I also want to restore these materials to their deserved status. However, for the capsule designed for the occasion, I have selected architectural symbols for each of the three cities involved in the project: Heatherwick's The Vessel in New York; Norman Foster's Great Hall at the British Museum for London; and the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Paris. As a starting point for each piece, I stayed true to the principles of SO-LE Studio. All made of recycled leather, each item plays with illusion and distortion, they look heavy and cold but, on the contrary, when worn, they transmit warmth and lightness. Without initial briefs, I wanted the creative process to highlight a detail for each selected architecture and let geometry do the rest.»