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The Most Jaw-Dropping Jewellery Presented At Paris Haute
Couture Fashion Week
Despite the riots in France last weekend, Paris was
relatively calm by the onset of haute couture week on Monday. The news
nevertheless made for a rather incongruous backdrop to the city’s starring role
as the world’s high temple to luxury to the 0.01 per cent.
Many couture clients had already enjoyed a month of travel to
the likes of Athens, Lake Como and London to get sneak peeks of many of the
high jewellery collections. It left many houses in fact with the enviable
problem of depleted stock for their one-of-a-kind, six-figure jewels by the
time they even made it to Paris.
There was still plenty to be seen in the Place Vendôme
environs however. The likes of Chaumet and Piaget celebrated their creative
roots, while Boucheron pushed the boat out in search of the high jewellery of
the future.
Yellow diamonds, among the most precious gemstones in the
world, were a common theme. Graff, whose founder Laurence Graff appreciated
their beauty as early as the 1970s, gave over its Parisian flagship to an
exhibition of its greatest canary diamond hits, while Messika made them the
belle of their ball, or rather disco.
Louis Vuitton watch director Jean Arnault even chose Paris
Couture as the moment for relaunching the brand’s Tambour watch. It comes with
a whole new movement, fully integrated metal bracelet, a slimmer, sleeker look
and an altogether more luxurious price point than the original.
The focus overall, however, remained on the jewellery. Keep
reading to discover the best of the collections presented in Paris this week.
Chaumet
Nature has always inspired jewellery but few houses are more
devoted to capturing the beauty of flora than Chaumet. The unfurling of a fern
on a dewy morning, the delicate petals of a pansy in spring are conjured up in
gold and exceptional coloured gems in this year’s Jardin de Chaumet collection.
There are secret watches aplenty, and many necklaces are transformable to
maximise wearability — a useful thing when you’re spending six figures on a
jewel. In one necklace, the minimalist curve of an arum lily flower is
abstracted to become a Zaha-Hadid-style sculptural motif in white and yellow
diamonds. It can also be removed and shabby as a brooch.
De Beers
This week marked Chapter Two of the diamond house’s
Metamorphosis collection, which was first unveiled in January. The emphasis is
on the passing of the seasons, each one represented by a different butterfly
ring. Summer was represented by one in yellow gold and diamonds, materials
echoed also in the spiral of ammonites across a triple finger ring and
jaw-lifting earrings. It also showcased its technical prowess with no less than
20 of the 37 pieces being transformable. Earrings can be worn as diamond studs
for daytime or assembled as dramatic ear climbers for the evening. Rings can be
worn with or without jackets, while a dramatic bib necklace, evoking the cracks
visible in a frozen lake with shards of textured white gold and diamonds, can
be worn with or without its show-stoppingly rare green diamond.
Boucheron
Freedom and joy were at the centre of creative director
Claire Choisne’s mind when she conceived her new collection at the suffocating
height of lockdown. Her no-holds-barred imagination and willingness to
experiment with materials has led to what is perhaps her most audacious
collection yet. At first sight, a giant hair bow appears to be a
two-dimensional image lifted from Roy Lichtenstein. In fact it’s a supple,
exquisitely engineered facsimile in diamonds and gold that incorporates
magnesium for lightness, and bio-acetate, usually used in the optical industry,
for a pop-art flash of red. That same lightness of touch is brought to precious
brooches that look like iron-on-patches and gem-set hoodie strings. The house’s
150-year old iconic question-mark necklace design here becomes a cartoon
version of one from the archives, realised in tanzanite and diamonds.
Piaget
With ex-Chanel Benjamin Comar now at the helm, this year
marks a moment of change for the Swiss house, and appropriately its new high
jewellery collection is another conceived around the idea of metamorphosis.
Just as it focuses away from a marketing-driven offering and back to the
unbounded creativity and top-tier craftsmanship that was its midcentury heyday
hallmark, Piaget’s collection focuses on moments of renewal and unbounded
energy in nature. The rush of water in a mountain river is captured in an
asymmetrical necklace that drips with diamonds, rock crystal, blue sapphires
and aquamarine. The house’s mastery of gold comes to life in a dramatic ear
cuff of leaves in textured gold, diamonds and mother of pearl. It’s exciting to
see what will come next, particularly given that next year marks 150 years of
Piaget.
Messika
Disco encapsulated THE sound and look of the 70s. Who can
forget Bianca Jagger in legendary Manahttan nightclub Studio 54 atop a white
horse? Or Paris’ Le Palace coming alive with stars of that era’s fashion world
from Lou Lou de la Falaise to Yves Saint Laurent to Paloma Picasso? Long, heady
nights under the disco ball provided potent inspiration for Messika, Paris’
high priestesses of glam. With Carla Bruni as the face of the campaign, the
gleam of one wide, white gold choker is punctuated with an enormous moi-et-toi
duo of a 20.5 carat yellow diamond and 9 carat white diamond, while another
envelops the neck in geometric shield motifs of snow-set and cushion-set
diamonds.
Pomellato
Pomellato’s new collection is an ode to its home of Milan,
capital of Italian fashion and design, and a constant source of inspiration
since the jeweller’s founding in 1967. The sharply angled brickwork of the
imposing medieval Castello Sforzesco in the heart of the city becomes a bold
setting for reverse-set rubellites. Stefano Boeri’s 2014 Bosco Verticale, or
Vertical Forest, a pair of high-rises bursting with plant life, is translated
into striking earrings of green tourmaline, set in colour-matched titanium and
peppered with violet-blue tanzanites. Pomellato’s day-to-night approach to
jewellery meanwhile comes through in signature gourmette links, which are
supersized in the form of cuffs that are decorated with diamonds. The results
are bold enough for Wonder Woman.
Hermès
With the craze for Hermès bags reaching dizzying heights, the
house goes one better than leather and exotic skin with one made entirely in
diamonds and gold. To celebrate a new, expanded offering for its Robert
Dumas-conceived Chaîne d’Ancre collection, the star of the show is a tiny bag,
or minaudière literally dripping in diamond pavé chain and just big enough to
contain an Hermès lipstick. More broadly, creative director for jewellery
Pierre Hardy has taken the house’s iconic sea-bound chain and imagined it in
every metal and every thickness – chains make up tiny mesh in flexible
bracelets, contrasting chains criss-cross over each other in glorious abandon —
many with the option of added pavé diamonds and coloured gemstones.
Buccellati
The luminescent beauty of ancient Byzantine mosaics inspires
Buccellati’s new collection, which becomes a showcase for its ability to
transform hard metal into something supple as silk, and secure precious gems
into tissue-thin, gold lacework settings. The starry sky that decorates the
ceiling of the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna inspired a flat necklace,
decorated with blue sapphires and yellow diamonds in textured gold settings and
halos of diamond pavé, fits effortlessly to the curve of the neck and angles of
the collarbone.
Tasaki
Nature’s constant movement inspires
Prabal Gurung’s new high jewellery collection for Tasaki. The Japanese pearl
and diamond specialist alternates akoya pearls and softly shaded pastel
sapphires in chandelier earrings that move freely with the wearer to suggest
the flight of birds and which have the added benefit of bringing flattering
light to the face. The rush of the waterfall meanwhile is evoked in a swirling
collar of paraiba tourmalines from which fall cascades of gradating pearls.
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