To kick off New York Fashion Week, Bulgari chose not to limit itself to the usual private event playbook. The evening hosted by the maison at the Boom Boom Room actually began outdoors, on the High Line, with the unveiling of AuruBoros, an installation conceived by Berlin-based duo Plastique Fantastique. Only after this initial stop did guests move on to the party, which brought together ambassadors Anne Hathaway and Lisa, alongside Hudson Williams and Joey King, among others.
This sequence speaks volumes about how major luxury brands are shaping their presence during fashion weeks. Hospitality and the red carpet remain central tools, but focus is also shifting toward leaving a mark on the city, even if only temporary. In this case, Bulgari uses one of its most recognizable motifs, Serpenti, to make an impact on an urban space visited far beyond the perimeter of invited guests.
The choice of the High Line, an elevated park created from Manhattan's rail infrastructure, places the project at an intersection where architecture, pedestrian traffic, and the cityscape overlap. It is a setting distinct from a boutique, a runway hall, or a window display: the piece must engage with light, weather, and the people passing through or viewing it from outside. For a maison, this means partially relinquishing total control over the environment and entrusting the brand's image to a more open encounter with the public.
From jewelry to the scale of the city
AuruBoros takes Serpenti's iconography as its starting point, but does not aim to literally reproduce a snake. Beatrice Galilee, a curator involved in the presentation, described the work as an opening up of form, left free to traverse the city rather than fixed in a singular representation. The reference point is the ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a serpent eating its own tail, associated with transformation, renewal, and continuity.
Plastique Fantastique, formed by Marco Canevacci and Yena Young, conceived the installation in relation to its site. The structure appears to emerge from the ground, weave between buildings, and press against the surrounding architecture. Its reflective surface alters its presence based on ambient conditions and the movement of passersby. Reading its form also remains deliberately unstable: distinguishing a beginning from an end, a head from a tail, is not immediately evident.
This visual ambiguity is the most compelling aspect of the project. Serpenti has long been an identifiable hallmark of the Bulgari vocabulary; bringing it into the public sphere, however, requires avoiding the feel of a mere oversized billboard. The piece attempts this by playing with scale, reflections, and its relationship to the built environment. The symbol is not merely enlarged: it becomes a presence to circumnavigate and interpret, with a profile that shifts along with the perspective of those walking past.
The installation's value, therefore, does not rely solely on its role as the kickoff for a Fashion Week party. In a city with a longstanding tradition of temporary public art, the decision to create a site-specific intervention allows Bulgari to move Serpenti beyond the product and strictly commercial messaging. It is a cultural strategy that transforms a brand code into an environmental experience, without severing it from its jewelry origins.
An evening with two audiences
The route between the High Line and the Boom Boom Room divides the evening into two complementary moments. The first is visible and urban, at least in its setting; the second returns to being a staple NYFW social event, populated by ambassadors, actors, and pop culture figures. Anne Hathaway and Lisa took center stage at the initial presentation, wearing Bulgari jewelry, before joining the other event guests.
Their presence is not a secondary detail. The ambassadors epitomize the brand's ability to speak to diverse audiences and markets: Hathaway brings a longstanding familiarity with international cinema and the red carpet, while Lisa moves between music, fashion, and a global fanbase. Within the Fashion Week format, these faces give the project immediate circulation; but their role works above all because it is anchored to a physical object and an urban setting, rather than just a photo opportunity.
For luxury, the presence of celebrities has become part of an ecosystem where product, entertainment, architecture, and sociality coexist. The risk is that the event remains an interchangeable backdrop. Bulgari sought to give the evening a more defined structure: the installation introduces a theme—the metamorphosis of Serpenti—and the party extends its relational dimension. These are not two disconnected initiatives, but two scales of the same narrative: the public scale of the landscape and the intimate one of the guests.
Why Fashion Week is fertile ground for luxury
New York Fashion Week is not just a schedule of collections. It is also a period when the attention of the press, industry professionals, creatives, and the public is focused on the city. Fashion houses that do not hold runway shows can use these days to position a launch, an opening, or a cultural intervention without having to measure themselves directly against the logic of the catwalk. Bulgari steps into this space with a format that does not need to showcase a collection to remain coherent with its own identity.
The High Line adds a decisive element: it is a site already charged with meaning for contemporary design and urban transformation. Plastique Fantastique's intervention does not attempt to neutralize this identity, but rather leverages its tensions—the passage between buildings, the elevated perspective, the light-reflecting surfaces. The city is not merely a stage set for the serpent: it is part of the way the serpent appears.
Naturally, the inherent limitation of any temporary brand-tied installation remains: the balance between artistic autonomy and communication objectives is inevitably delicate. AuruBoros originated within a Bulgari project and makes its symbolic universe visible. Its effectiveness, however, is measured precisely by its ability not to be confined by that message, offering a form that passersby can engage with without necessarily having to know the history of Serpenti or attend the party.
The move points to a significant direction for the sector: in contemporary luxury, the strongest event is not necessarily the one with the longest guest list, but the one capable of producing an image that outlives the evening. Here, that image is entrusted to a reflective structure, porous to the city and built around a historic symbol. The Boom Boom Room closes the day on a glamorous note; the High Line, on the other hand, opens it to a different scale, where the identity of Bulgari meets New York's public space.
