Tiffany's Bets on Black Love in New Campaign Featuring Beyoncé and JAY-Z

Photograph by Mason Poole. Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.

Black is beautiful, and American jewelry powerhouse Tiffany & Co. revealed Monday that it is betting big that it can revitalize the luxury brand and help it expand to new frontiers of cultural impact and profit.

A year after being purchased by Paris-based LVMH, the 183-year-old company — under the direction of the 29-year-old son of LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, Alexandre, who is the executive vice president of product and communications at Tiffany’s — announced that Beyoncé and Jay-Z will be the stars of its latest campaign “ABOUT LOVE.”

"Beyoncé and JAY-Z are the epitomai of the modern love story,” Arnault said of the decision to make the black billionaire couple the anchor for its new creative push, reportedly the result of close collaboration and a shared vision between both the Carters and Tiffany & Co. 

As a brand that has always stood for love, strength and self-expression, we could not think of a more iconic couple that better represents Tiffany's values. We are honored to have the Carters as a part of the Tiffany family. 

Tiffany & Co. brings out all the stops in the first images from the campaign. Sharing the stage for the first time in an ad, the couple quoted in a statement from the brand as saying, "Love is the diamond that the jewelry and art decorate," are framed by a painting by another black cultural icon — Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Equals Pi, painted in 1982 and never seen before in public.

Jay-Z, a huge Basquiat fan, rocks a hairdo reminiscent of the artist's own famous locks while the famous couple dons some of the jewelry company’s most famous pieces. Most notably Beyoncé becomes just the fourth woman, and the first black woman, to wear the 128-carat Tiffany Diamond, made famous by Audrey Hepburn who wore it in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

It’s a bold statement for a company that started at a time when many of those with the hue of its ambassadors were legally enslaved and has sought to appeal to a wealthy, mostly white clientele over the ensuing decades.

It’s a new world; however, Tiffany’s says that the “ABOUT LOVE" campaign “reflects its continued support of underrepresented communities,” and as a part of the house's partnership with the Carters has pledged $2 million towards scholarship and internship programs for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Whether or not the effort becomes the game-changer it aspires to be remains to be seen. For now, however, it has both fans and critics of the move buzzing and that may be worth the steep price of admission into a whole new world of luxury advertising. 

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