Roberto Coin
the explorer of beauty

“Italy is the best, most wonderful theater in the world: an open-air theater where everybody can decide what role to play.”

We have the pleasure to present an exclusive interview with Roberto Coin, renowned Italian jewelry designer in collaboration with CNN, as they delve into the profound connection between Roberto Coin and the essence of beauty.

Roberto Coin has traveled the world in search of beautiful inspirations for the jewelry that bears his name. “I find beauty everywhere,” he says, “in nature, in people, in architecture, in art and in food.” And his collections bear that out: since starting the brand in 1996, he’s taken inspiration from a wide variety of sources, from the natural world in Animalier, to the stars, with his Zodiac Medallions.

Still, few places inspire Coin like his native Italy. When you’re walking through Verona—or any Italian city—with Roberto Coin, you can’t expect to get anywhere fast. Every couple steps he stops to point out another beautiful thing—the design of the rosoni medallions on a building’s facade, or the red brick merlons of Castelvecchio.

Now he’s paused to admire the Ponte Pietra, a Roman bridge completed around 100 BC and still in use today. “Even when I’m by myself, I am never alone,” says Roberto. “Walking through this city is like watching a film for me, I can go back in my mind and see what it used to be in those days.”

Today, he’s in Italy’s città dell’amore, Verona, where he spoke about his process, his philosophy of life, and the origins of his Love in Verona collection.

Roberto Coin: For me Italy is the best, most wonderful theater in the world—an open-air theater where everybody can decide what role to play. And I have decided to play the Explorer of Beauty.

As Italians, beauty is in our DNA. We have the good fortune to be born in a place where we are surrounded by art. Maybe we just get used to the beauty immediately and then we can’t live without it.

Roberto Coin: As a child, I spent every summer with my grandmother in the countryside near Venice. It’s a beautiful area where the houses have been built along the banks of the Brenta Riviera. Where nature dictates the pace, typical of life in the countryside.

Every day, as I was running around with the other children, I used to stop and look at this little workshop—Elsa’s Atelier. Inside, I could see colored fabrics, women absorbed in their work, creating fashion, pinning and unpinning, sewing and tailoring. It looked like an incredible world to me and I was extremely curious. I learned a lot. I saw how to create an object from a wish, how to sketch, how to choose fabrics and about the harmony of colors and shapes. All of this inspired me deeply.

I fell in love, and, as I was very strong-minded, found a way to enter this world and become part of it.

Roberto Coin: Storytelling is at the heart of everything we do, from inspiration and design to fabrication. Storytelling is how we communicate with our customers. For example, every piece of Roberto Coin jewelry features a single ruby hidden inside, and that ruby is a message of goodwill to our clients.

But even before it becomes my signature, the ruby itself has a story to tell. In fact, every single one of our jewels and materials has a story, and it is our mission to make sure that story is a positive one. That’s why we have a zero-tolerance policy towards conflict diamonds. That’s why we’re committed to keeping gold furnished by unethical producers out of our supply chains. We’ve been committed to ethical sourcing since day one. I’m very proud to tell that story with every piece of jewelry we create.