Van Cleef & Arpels-designed crown of Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran. She wore the crown in 1967 coronation ceremony.Pop up exhibition in The Landmark, Hong Kong (2013)
The Dutch diamond-cutter Alfred Van Cleef and his father-in-law, Salomon Arpels, founded the company in 1896. In 1906, following Arpels’s death, Alfred and two of his brothers-in-law, Charles and Julien, acquired space for Van Cleef & Arpels at 22 Place Vendôme, across from the Hôtel Ritz, where Van Cleef & Arpels opened its first boutique shop.[6] The third Arpels brother, Louis Arpels, joined the company in 1913.[7]
Alfred and Esther’s daughter, Renée (born Rachel) Puissant, assumed the company’s artistic direction in 1926. Puissant worked closely with draftsman René Sim Lacaze for the next twenty years.[8] Van Cleef & Arpels were the first French jewelers to open boutiques in Japan and China.
Van Cleef & Arpels was charged with the task of making the crown of Queen Nazli of Egypt in the 1930s.[9]
In 1966, Van Cleef & Arpels was charged with the task of making the crown of Empress Farah Pahlavi for her upcoming coronation in 1967. A team was sent to Iran to choose the major gems to use for the crown. After 11 months of work,[10] the company presented the empress with a crown made of emerald velvet set with 36 emeralds, 36 rubies, 105 pearls and 1,469 diamonds.[11]
Van Cleef & Arpels has 155 stores. Products are in standalone boutiques, boutiques within major department stores, and in independent stores. Standalone boutiques are present in Geneva, Zürich, Vienna, Munich, London, Milan, Shanghai and Paris, where the company has multiple locations, including its flagship store at Place Vendôme.
On 2 December 1933, Van Cleef and Arpels received French Patent No. 764,966 for a proprietary gem setting style it calls Serti Mysterieux, or "Mystery Setting", a technique employing a setting where the prongs are invisible.[19] Each stone is faceted onto gold rails less than two-tenths of a millimeter thick. The technique can require 300 hours of work per piece or more, and only a few are produced each year.[20]
Chaumet received an English patent for a similar technique in 1904 as did Cartier in 1933, however neither used the process as extensively.[20]
Value
In 2010/2011, the company's estimated sales were €450 million in total sales and €45 million in watches.[21]
A 1936 Van Cleef & Arpels custom jewelry piece with a "Mystery Setting" sold for $326,500 during an auction at Christie's New York in 2009.[22]
In the 1971 James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever, Van Cleef & Arpels gets mentioned by Bond when Tiffany Case discusses the story behind her name: that she was born at Tiffany & Co. as a pre-term baby. Bond responds that she should be fortunate her name is not Van Cleef & Arpels.
In season 4, episode 23 of Frasier, the character Niles Crane is speaking on his mobile phone with his wife Maris, from whom he is recently separated at the time. On the phone, Niles says to Maris 'I miss you more...than Van Cleef would miss Arpels'.
In Issue 116 of New X-Men (2001 series), the character Emma Frost, who has recently gained the power to turn into organic diamond, tells a taxi, "the Van Cleef and Arpels store on Fifth at Fifty-Seventh, driver. I intend to have myself valued."
Van Cleef & Arpels boutique in Kyiv was opened up by the exhibition of they jewelers in the National Art Museum of Ukraine in 2019. Anzhela Cherkashyna filmed this event. Tetiana Chorna, Kyiv modern art jeweller, was featured in this video