It’s a fine line between love and spook, and Cartier straddles it with precision craftsmanship. To launch its latest Love collection, the best-selling fine jewelry line created in New York back in the kinky 70s, the fine folks at Cartier held a dinner in the upstairs of The Lion restaurant in the West Village—just days before Halloween. There we were creeping up a rickety staircase when what we thought was a wall turned into a door and we suddenly found ourselves in a small, dimly lit, red velvet-walled library filled with leather books, bizarre antiques and strange taxidermy. We remarked it looked like something out of The Addams Family.

If you could get past the stuffed boar’s head staring at you from the top shelf, it was actually a pretty romantic setting, the kind of place where Love could be found—if you looked. Carefully nestled among the oxidized oddities and cracked curios were various glittering pieces from the new collection: a pink-gold necklace with interlocking diamond and black ceramic rings; ear pendants in white gold and diamonds; and a white-gold bracelet with blue and pink sapphires, amethysts and aquamarines. Our favorite, however, is this giant 18k rose-gold cuff encrusted with diamonds and bearing a screw motif, the signature theme of Love, symbolizing unity. (Did we not say Love was created in the kinky 70s?)

We had the pleasure of sitting next to Pierre Rainero (Director of Image, Style & Heritage) and Guillaume Alix (VP of Marketing & Communication), who, by the end of dinner, had pulled out an iPad to show us the rest of the collection. It lit up the room with its bright, beam-like screen and we actually pushed aside our cheesecake cobbler and Cartier champagne to get a better view. Swiping along, we came across images old and new of celebrities showing their Love. Especially striking—striking!—was an image of a young Ali McGraw in the 70s. Love’s designs haven’t changed all that much since jewelry designer Aldo Cipullo’s original idea of a medieval chastity belt. Which goes to show how timeless and enduring Love is.