Fashion

Tiffany & Co. Lights Up Dubai With Dazzling High Jewelry and Watches Exhibition

BYMille Team

November 19, 2025

Just as Dubai Watch Week opened its seventh edition on November 19, American jeweler Tiffany & Co. brought a four-day exhibition of high jewelry masterpieces and horological archives to the Middle East for the first time, staging an invitation-only showcase at Marsa Al Arab from November 17 to 20, drawing a small circle of regional tastemakers and collectors, including Lebanese icon Nancy Ajram (the luxury jewelry brand’s first-ever Arab ambassador) and Saudi media personality Lojain Omran.

It helps to remember that Tiffany’s fame didn’t begin with engagement rings or robin-egg blue boxes. In the late 19th century, it became one of the first American houses to shape global taste in gemstones, introducing tanzanite to the world in 1968, popularizing kunzite, naming morganite, and influencing how colored diamonds were evaluated. The Apollo Fancy Intense Yellow diamond necklace shown in Dubai is part of that lineage, a reminder that Tiffany was working with rare color long before it became a commercial trend.

Then there is Jean Schlumberger, whose presence in the exhibition runs deeper than recognizable icons. Schlumberger joined Tiffany in 1956 and helped transform jewelry from a symbol of status into a form of storytelling. His work stood apart in mid-century jewelry, which was dominated by symmetry, heavy metals, and traditional diamond pieces. Schlumberger preferred enamel, pearls, coral, and turquoise; he sculpted whimsical birds and sea creatures; and he treated jewelry almost as miniature sculpture. The showcase in Dubai highlights natural saltwater pearls from the Gulf—a subtle acknowledgment of the region’s own jewelry legacy, long before oil wealth shaped its modern identity.

Supplied

The Bird on a Rock—seen here both as jewelry and now as watchmaking—is more than a house signature. When it was first created, the bird’s exaggerated proportions and casual pose challenged the era’s seriousness about “fine jewels.” In today’s exhibition, it is given a new function: perched on a rotating gemstone ring in the Bird on a Rock watch, or powering Tiffany’s first flying tourbillon movement, introduced in 2024.

Tiffany’s watchmaking dates back to the 1840s, decades before most fashion houses existed. In 1877, it signed an agreement with Patek Philippe that lasted over a century, and for long stretches, Tiffany was one of the most influential watch retailers in America. Yet unlike Swiss maisons, Tiffany’s timepieces were historically designed through a jeweler’s lens: dials inspired by enameling, cases sculpted like miniature objects, materials treated like gemstones. When the brand announced a “return” to watchmaking in 2023, it wasn’t entering a new category, but returning to its oldest habits.

Supplied

Which is why presenting archives in Dubai makes sense as the Middle East is not simply a market for high jewelry. Pearl-diving histories, family-driven collection cultures, and the rise of watch connoisseurship have created a region where craftsmanship is deeply understood (alongside being admired). By showing archival pieces here, Tiffany is acknowledging that the region is not a backdrop for luxury expansion but a setting with its own historical authority.

In this context, the exhibition, then, is less about brand presence and more about narrative ownership. Tiffany is repositioning itself not as the American jeweler of pop culture lore, but as a house whose gemstone innovation, watch history, and artistic heritage are part of global material culture. And Dubai, increasingly a place where legacies are debated, not just consumed, is the venue where that story makes sense.

Tiffany & Co. Lights Up Dubai With Dazzling High Jewelry and Watches Exhibition

Suggestions

Articles

Topics

Tiffany & Co. Lights Up Dubai With Dazzling High Jewelry and Watches Exhibition

Related Stories

More From Fashion

Suggestions

Articles

Topics

Newsletter

The only newsletter you won't unsubscribe from

Follow Us