‘Penelope asked us and that is such an honour, as usually we have to look for partners, but to be working with someone who believes in the cause is amazing,’ says Nadja Swarovski.

According to a 2018 Hollywood Reporter report, Lunch at Filandon, Penelope Cruz’s favorite restaurant in Madrid, sealed the deal when Nadja Swarovski approached her about doing a fine-jewelry collaboration.

“You can’t even call it a meeting — it was more magical, like a reunion,” Cruz remembers. “We talked about things that have nothing to do with jewelry. We talked about life, and from that first moment, we felt a very strong connection.”

Image via Swarovski

Monday night in Paris, when Cruz and Swarovski revealed the fine-jewelry collection that evolved from that initial conversation. At a cocktail party at Apicius, a restaurant in a 19th-century villa just north of the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, the new partners debuted Atelier Swarovski by Penelope Cruz, a 14-piece collection that’s rooted in designs the actress says she would want to wear, according to a 2018 Hollywood Reporter report.

“Nadja gave me the freedom to create only things that I really loved,” Cruz says. “So I never have to lie in an interview. I’m really passionate about every single piece.”

Cruz has always been a big fan of jewelry.

“I had a ring, a garnet set in gold, that my grandmother Modesta gave me and my sister to share. It was my most precious thing but got lost or stolen, so when I told Nadja [Swarovski] the story, I knew I wanted to make a piece that was inspired by Modesta.”

According to The National in a 2018 report, the actress spent a lot of time at her grandmother’s apartment as a child and the three pear-shaped rubies, asymmetrically set with halos of diamonds in 18-karat fair trade gold, is her tribute.

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