How Tiffany & Co. Is Luring Millennials By Partnering With The Whitney Biennial 2017

Tiffany & Co. is sprucing its image for a younger, art-savvy crowd. The famed jeweler has recently unveiled a partnership with the Whitney Museum of American Art; where it enlisted the talents of five artists featured at this week’s Biennial opening to each design an object with the brand’s craftsmen. Handpicked by the 2017 Whitney Biennial curators, Mia Locks and Christopher Y. Lew, the creations are currently on display in the windows at the firm’s flagship on Fifth Avenue.

Indeed, Tiffany & Co. has been very active as of late. The brand removed its CEO, Frederic Cumenal, and its design director, Francesca Amfitheatrof, replacing her with three-time CFDA Award winner Reed Krakoff—a designer with little, if any, fine jewelry experience, but who is beloved within the fashion community. This is due, perhaps in large part, to the reported steadily dwindling sales.

Its flagship store being adjacent to Trump Tower, with its barricades and protesting crowds, certainly hasn't helped matters. But this is not the only impediment it faces. The buzz surrounding the jeweler has become stagnant, and in the effort to gain back the momentum that it had in the ’90s and early aughts, Tiffany & Co. has undertook a number of new enterprises. First it collaborated with hip jewelry designer Eddie Borgo on a capsule collection, then it appointed Krakoff, and then it debuted a campaign during the Super Bowl that starred Lady Gaga and featured Amfitheatrof’s last collection, HardWear.

With the Whitney Biennial, Tiffany & Co. is not doing anything new. Rather, it’s going back to basics, so to speak. The brand has a history with supporting emerging talents in the art community, including Andy Warhol in the ’50s. But such collaborations have been few and far between since then. So with the goal of creating hype and attracting millennials (read: something that the Whitney Museum is also trying to achieve), recruiting talents with fresh ideas seemed like a logical move. It is something that Harold Mendez, one of the artists participating in this project, has observed.

“Tiffany is a high-end jewelry company that is sort of out of reach for me,” he said. But with the Whitney, it is drawing a younger audience by engaging people in the arts.”

Mendez created five molten, multi-colored sterling silver vessels titled “When the night is going wrong or when the day is full of empty promise,” and are fashioned after a pre-Columbian death mask. Being Columbian himself, he conveyed how the piece “speaks to his personal history,” and how “looking at archives helps makes sense of the present day”—something that Tiffany is evidently doing with this collaboration. He also admired the idea of creating a piece that holds water, a characteristic that fellow artist Shara Hughes shares.

“I chose a porcelain water pitcher as my collaboration item,” she expressed. “I’m using the organic shape of the pitcher to mimic the sun and moon and their radiant reflections in a landscape as if they are either ascending or descending.”

Her 10 vessels are titled “Remote Twilight,” and utilize bone china instead of sterling silver. They feature hand-painted, expressionist brush strokes in bold colors that differ with each piece. “I wanted my edition to feel personal,” she added. “Although it's meant to be used, I wanted the item to be one of a kind, and to have the consumer feel as though they have more of a connection to the object rather than something that is mass produced and sold.”

For Tiffany & Co. (and for any brand really), the bottom line is what matters. And to achieve this, fine jewelry and objects need to feel special, if only to warrant their high price tags. This is why most jewelers place a great deal of their marketing dollars on milestone moments, when a ring or necklace is being purchased for someone else to commemorate a significant occasion—think: weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. But this is no longer enough. More and more millennials are buying pieces for themselves, and wearing them everyday as a way of looking cool, showing personality and standing apart from the crowd. Judging by all the brand’s recent activities, it is aware of this trend in consumer culture, which is why it is not too mired down. Because when it comes to luxury, few can compete with the brand’s reputation. As artist Carrie Moyer, who went traditional and designed 10 sterling silver necklaces, stated:

“When I think about Tiffany, I think about being treasured and celebrated.”