Pomellato Pays Homage to Its Fashionable History with Dazzling Exhibition

How did a historic Milanese jeweler become a modern revolutionary? That is the central question of “Pomellato: Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire,” a dazzling new exhibition on view at the Palais de Tokyo through July 20. Rather than tracing a conventional timeline, the esteemed Italian jewelry scholar and curator Alba Cappellieri opted to bypass chronological order entirely. “Generally speaking, I don’t like chronological exhibitions,” Cappellieri notes of her decision to structure the show around thematic chapters rather than calendar years. “I am much more interested in why things happened rather than when.”

Cappellieri suggests that Pomellato’s biggest disruption wasn’t just its bold chains or vibrant colored gemstones, but its decision to approach jewelry through (quite literally) the lens of fashion. “You cannot understand Pomellato if you don’t consider the context it came from,” Cappellieri says. “It had a fashion background, not simply a jewelry background. That changed everything.” Founded in Milan in 1967, as Milan was establishing itself as a center of fashion and design, the house emerged alongside prêt-à-porter rather than traditional haute joaillerie. Founder Pino Rabolini—a goldsmith’s son who mingled with artists, designers, and photographers at Milan’s legendary Jamaica Bar—developed friendships that eventually brought Pomellato into the pages of Vogue Italia.

That perspective carries through the exhibition’s six themed galleries, which look at shifts in style, craftsmanship, color, image, and representations of women. Historical jewels are shown alongside nearly six decades of advertising campaigns and editorial photography by legends including Gian Paolo Barbieri, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Horst P. Horst, Albert Watson, and Michel Comte, revealing how Pomellato helped turn jewelry photography from straightforward product shots into something far more sophisticated.

For CEO Sabina Belli, the exhibition shows that Pomellato’s archive remains an active source of inspiration rather than a nostalgic exercise. “This exhibition is not conceived as a retrospective,” she says, “but as a living archive that connects past and present.” What struck Cappellieri most was how contemporary many of the archive images still feel. “These are not simply historical advertisements; they anticipated conversations about identity and self-expression, presenting women as bold, sensual, and free long before female empowerment became a central cultural theme,” she explained. “Pomellato was never simply following its time. It was very often ahead of it.”

On view through July 20, 2026, at the Palais de Tokyo; free entry with reservation at Pomellato.com