1 week Ago By Kerry McDermott
“It was a perfect summer day and day of perfect love.” So said Elizabeth Taylor of a memorable afternoon on the French Riviera in 1957. She was a newlywed, having married producer Mike Todd that February, and pregnant with their daughter.
When the then 25-year-old siren emerged from the swimming pool at La Fiorentina, their rented villa near Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (“the most beautiful house you’ve ever seen,” as she put it), her smitten husband surprised her with a spectacular suite of Cartier jewellery fashioned from rubies and diamonds. The moment was captured for posterity thanks to a friend armed with a video camera, and Taylor herself – renowned for her obsession with precious stones – recounted it in her 2002 book, Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewellery . “I was in the pool, swimming laps at our home, and Mike came outside to keep me company,” she wrote.
“He was holding a red leather box, and inside was a ruby necklace, which glittered in the warm light. It was like the sun, lit up and made of red fire.” There was more to come.
“First, Mike put it around my neck and smiled. Then he bent down and put matching earrings on me. Next came the bracelet.
Since there was no mirror around, I had to look into the water. The jewellery was so glorious, rippling red on blue like a painting. I just shrieked with joy, put my arms around Mike’s neck, and pulled him into the pool after me.
” Tragically, the happiness that radiates from the sun-kissed Taylor and Todd in the vintage footage was not to last. Todd was killed when his private plane, named the Lucky Liz, crashed while en route to New York the following year. The couple’s baby girl, Liza, was just six months old.
Elizabeth Taylor was as famous for her tempestuous love life as she was her jewellery collection (Todd was her third husband, she was his third wife). But she described the larger than life producer as her “true love”, and later told how she thought she wouldn’t survive the loss, “and didn’t much care if I did not”. The grief was still raw when she delivered one of her most memorable performances, as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
Following Taylor’s death in 2011, the Cartier necklace was sold at a Christie’s auction as part of her estate sale, along with the matching earrings and bracelet. The necklace alone, which features a delicate lattice-work design of baguette-, brilliant- and fancy-cut diamonds as a backdrop to those dazzling Burmese rubies, fetched almost $4 million. Last year, it appeared in the pages of US Vogue , worn by Blake Lively as part of her September cover story.
And as of today, the storied piece is on display at the V&A in London as part of its spectacular Cartier exhibition . “Not even the best actor in the world could fake her reaction to Mike Todd presenting her with this necklace on holiday in the French Riviera,” says Vogue ’s contributing jewellery and watch director Rachel Garrahan, who is co-curator of the exhibition along with Helen Molesworth. It’s emblematic of Taylor’s relationship with Cartier, says Garrahan, who notes the other legendary pieces in her collection, including the Taylor-Burton diamond, and the La Peregrina pearl, “which can be traced all the way back to the Spanish Crown Jewels in the time of Philip II.
Not only does it represent Elizabeth Taylor’s legendary love of jewellery, it also reflects her passion for Cartier.” Cartier is at the V&A until 16 November.
