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In 1965, Jean Dinh Van founded a completely unexpected jewelry brand, where he crafted metal pieces by hand like a sculptor. His vision: to sublimate everyday objects in order to create jewelry that may be worn by everyone, every day.
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A gifted visionary, his pioneering nature was also reflected in his distribution decisions. He was quickly selected as one of the four most talented French jewellers and was asked to hold an exhibition in Montreal. On this occasion, Dinh Van was spotted by Cartier New York, and together they signed a distribution agreement immediately after. Even today, he remains one of only a few creators to have collaborated on unique pieces. His story had come full circle: the Maison where he was first trained had now become his springboard to the rest of the world.
The dinh van Maison was born.
A man of his times, he thrived on the new trends spreading across Paris and Europe in the mid-1960s.
Au cœur de cette ébullition créative, il découvre que dans le design comme dans la mode ou la littérature de jeunes talents explorent des territoires nouveaux d’expression : le Bauhaus, le sculpteur Cesare, l’écrivaine Françoise Sagan ou encore des grands noms de la couture comme Courreges et sa première mini-jupe ou bien Yves Saint-Laurent, petit prince de la haute-couture, qui invente la version moderne du prêt-à-porter de luxe. Cette révolution qui n’a pas encore touche la joaillerie, Jean Dinh Van choisit de s’en saisir et commence à rêver d’autre chose. Si la mode descend dans la rue, pourquoi la joaillerie ne sortirait-elle pas des coffres et inventer un bijou qui ne se pense pas seulement pour de grandes occasions.
À la force de son génie créatif, il réussit l’alliance du design moderne et d’une certaine forme de simplicité et concrétise ses premières idées des 1965 ou il réinvente l’idée que l’on se fait du bijou précieux. Ce bijou, il l’imagine tout à la fois facile à porter tout en restant éminemment sophistique dans ses détails mais surtout sa matière, l’or, qu’il chérit par-dessus tout et magnifie au gré de ses découvertes.
Immergé au sein des réseaux mondains parisiens, Jean Dinh Van ponctue son parcours de nombreuses rencontres : Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, Jean Schlumberger, César, etc.
Mais aussi Marie-Françoise Bleustein-Blanchet, fille du fondateur de Publicis, qui lui permettra de vendre ses bijoux au Publicis Drugstore, premier point de vente de la marque.
Jean Dinh Van qui s’est toujours affranchi des figures traditionnelles de la joaillerie, pousse son esprit frondeur jusqu’à puiser son inspiration dans les objets du quotidien qui l’entourent. Des objets purement fonctionnels, simples en apparence (une clef, une serrure, une lame de rasoir ou encore une punaise) se trouvent hissés au rang de motifs précieux et trouvent au travers du métal une forme de noblesse.
Avec sa vision, Jean Dinh Van fait bouger les lignes de la joaillerie en proposant des créations épurées et pour soi. Il écrit au travers de ses créations sa propre définition d’un luxe qu’il pense discret, non ostentatoire donnant vie à des bijoux dont l’esthétique est ramenée à l’essentiel, qui se portent au quotidien comme de véritables compagnons, des objets d’affection, pour tous les styles et toutes les occasions.
While succession had for centuries dictated the destiny of jewellery, Dinh Van invented inclusive pieces that were genderless and ageless. Free of any cultural or historical references, they could be worn indiscriminately by men and women alike, from all generations. Shared rather than inherited, they marked a common admiration for a contemporary aesthetic that tended towards the universal.
While other Maisons in the Place Vendôme never dared work without preliminary sketches, Jean Dinh Van started from the material to create his jewellery. He worked the gold instinctively, intuition guiding his hand until the perfect shape was achieved and his idea materialised into a piece, like serendipitous creative encounters obvious only to him. Thus, in a form of iteration, one sculptural prototype after another, he demonstrated the work of an artisan creator.
Jean Dinh Van swam against the current of every jewellery cliché: where rings were round, he made the first square ring, while medallions often featured religious motifs, his were hollowed out in the centre or inspired by industrialisation, introducing tubular shapes that had, at the time, never been seen before in jewellery.
In the same way, he relished creating new combinations of materials, like gold and steel, and went against something that every other jeweller sought to do: making the clasp as discreet as possible. Jean Dinh Van decided to make it the centrepiece of his jewellery.
Anti-conventional in nature, he thought to pair these precious gold creations with a simple satin string, embodying the concept of uninhibited jewellery. This disruptive blend was in perfect keeping with his desire to reconcile elements that were by their very nature contradictory.
Modern and easy to pair, this style gradually became all the rage and one of the Maison’s greatest successes, thus making jewellery accessible for all.
During his formative years, Jean Dinh Van became interested in raw materials and uncut stones. He began working with metal and sculpting the raw materials to create his own unique repertoire of shapes: sleek, essential, stripped down in appearance, but sophisticated in design.
In 1967, he created the "Deux Perles" ring for Pierre Cardin, a piece that would be "the key to everything that came afterwards". This square ring set with two pearls, one white and one gray, pivoting on the top like a Chinese abacus, is the perfect example of the structural design that is so characteristic of the Dinh Van creations.
Jean Dinh Van remained loyal to classic materials: a lot of metal and particularly, yellow gold. Ornamental stones progressively appeared in Dinh Van’s pieces and were at the origin of iconic creations, such as the "Impression" collection.
