‘What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.’
Holly Golightly in Truman Copote’s ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ – 1958

Tiffany & Co. have launched their Fall 2011 ad campaign and I’m breathless. A beautiful girl makes her way past New York’s Flatiron Building holding a bunch of red balloons, wearing a large silver lock pendant and all the right rings on her left ring finger. In the sexed up, hyped up, media clusterf**k that is most major glossy magazines, the Tiffany ad stands out a mile for it’s simplicity, romance, and sheer good taste. The notion that Tiffany & Co. understands very well is the notion of being truly ‘classic’. They get me every time.

My love affair with Tiffany & Co. started at age ten when I first watched ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s, not knowing what it was. The film stuck in my head for years until I caught it again in my late teens, thrilled to finally know its name. I recorded it, and watched it over and over until the VHS got snowier and snowier and suddenly I was in my early twenties. I dreamt of a life wandering down Manhattan streets with my take out coffee, my tiara, my big sunglasses and my cat with no name.

In real life I found myself in London studying Fashion. It was the early nineties and I was working hard to follow my glamorous dream. I worked so hard that when I graduated I had a job offer to go to New York to work for a predictions company. I turned it down because I was in love with the man who became my husband and father of my children. Manhattan could wait. I was in love. He took me to Tiffany in New York in 1997. Imagine then the potential for disappointment but it was just like the movie. It really was.

Going into Tiffany & Co. is like going into a bank. It’s very reassuring with its wood panelling, glass counters, and the men in suits making exorbitant jewellery sales with no mention of money. If I’m ever in the Bond Street store in London I always seek out my favourite Tiffany man, and that is because he made a significant moment special.

When my marriage ended, the Tiffany bracelet I had been wearing constantly for twelve years, a gift from my husband, now represented a chapter of my life which was closed. Wanting to replace it with something new and full of hope, I went to Tiffany’s in Bond Street and chose a simple silver bangle. Explaining the situation to the Sales Assistant, I tried to remove the old bracelet to try on the new but the catch had seized and it wouldn’t come off. ‘Allow me’ the gentleman said, and with a palpable clunk the old bracelet fell onto the glass counter. An era ended there and then. He handed me the new shiny bangle, a complete circle, observing that there were no endings, no beginnings and giving the moment due reverence.
That could only happen at Tiffany & Co. My purchase, though monumental to me, was completely inconsequential to Tiffany’s. And yet I was made to feel as though I had purchased the Tiffany Diamond itself.

In 2006 the ‘Bejewelled by Tiffany’ exhibition at Somerset House in London included the Tiffany Diamond, a huge canary yellow stone, a whopping 128 carats, in a single glass case next to a blow up of Audrey Hepburn in perhaps her most famous role. ‘How much is it worth?’ I asked a security guard. He repeated my question and then said,
‘It’s priceless Madam’.

Priceless. When you’re faced with a material thing that’s officially deemed priceless it’s quite a thing. No one can afford it. The poor and the rich are suddenly equal. All the money in the world simply can’t buy it. A bit like romance, style and unerring good taste. All of the things we have come to associate with Tiffany & Co. so perfectly demonstrated in their new advertisement. I think about my life and the journey I have taken in the opposite direction of my dream. I’m definitely not in New York, I’m still waiting for my bunch of red balloons, and I’m not quite ready to give the cat a name. One day I’ll find the place that makes me feel like Tiffany’s. When I do, you can make a large bet that I’ll be wearing a large silver lock pendant, stamped on the back with ‘T&Co.’.