Flights of fashion

Most maisons unveil their high-jewelry collections during Paris Haute Couture Week in July. However, some have taken to introducing themed “signature” lines at January’s haute couture shows, such as Chanel’s tribute to tweed this year, and Boucheron’s Question Mark necklaces. What is clear from the January 2020 offerings is that maisons are taking the opportunity to experiment, whether it’s with gem cuts, juxtapositions of color, or even a new design direction. Here’s a look at the high-jewelry trends from some of the major houses.

Boucheron

Boucheron creative director Claire Choisne has chosen the flamboyant Art Nouveau-style Question Mark necklace as the first subject of an annual signature collection the jeweler will reveal each January. Frédéric Boucheron originally designed the Question Mark in 1879. The opulent, open-ended design wrapped around the neck and finished in a flourish of diamonds deep into the décolletage, although there are other ways of wearing it. Actress Salma Hayek, for instance, wore a diamond and pearl Question Mark wrapped around an extravagant bun in her hair at this year’s Academy Awards.

Choisne has created eight modern interpretations of the iconic design, including the tremblant ivy leaf Lierre de Paris design with emerald pavé, the diamond and Burmese sapphire Plume de Paon, and the baroque Feuilles d’Acanthe in yellow gold and diamonds.

“The Boucheron style is above all a state of mind,” the creative director says. “In my opinion, it is captured perfectly by the Question Mark necklace, which I wanted to reinstate as one of Boucheron’s main signature pieces as soon as I arrived at the maison.” The necklace encapsulates the jewelry house’s “ethos of innovation, with a focus on emotion, and the beauty of expression, with a focus on women’s freedom,” she adds. 

Dior

Victoire de Castellane’s new Dior et Moi collection is a play on the popular “toi et moi” dual-gem design frequently used for rings, but the novelty here is the way she mixes exceptional and semi-precious stones to create eye-catching symbiotic relationships.

As creative director for jewelry, de Castellane is a colorist. On one double ring, she uses a cabochon turquoise and faceted emerald to pick out the colors of a black opal she’s set beside them. And for one of her between-the-finger rings, she frames a central black opal with a rainbow halo of gems and then adds a pink sapphire and a pearl as satellites. The effect is strikingly modern.

Opals are a favorite of the designer and so feature strongly in this 39-piece collection, some with lacquer settings highlighting their iridescent colors. Lacquer has been a signature of the maison since 2006, and Dior approaches it in the same way it does precious materials. It uses 15 shades of lacquer, in either solid or graduating tones, to make the gems’ colors pop.

Another modern touch is the use of asymmetric designs — especially for the earrings, which mix geometric gemstone cuts with soft, rounded semi-precious stones. One pair features a lacquer-framed opal and blue sapphire on one earring, and a lapis lazuli teardrop above a sapphire-framed pearl on the other; it’s the blue tones that marry them together. 

Louis Vuitton: rough plans

Not every brand can say it’s planning to incorporate the world’s second-largest rough diamond into its jewelry. In January, Louis Vuitton announced its 50% investment in the Sewelo diamond from Lucara’s Karowe mine and showcased the 1,758-carat rough at its Place Vendôme store.

The potential of the stone, which is covered in carbon, will become clearer over the coming months as Antwerp-based manufacturer HB Company makes progress in cutting it. However, Louis Vuitton has ambitions for using some of the resulting polished in its 2021 high-jewelry collection, which is less than 18 months away. One can only wonder what delights are locked inside this diamond.  

Chanel

From the Scottish borders to the couture house on the Rue Cambon, and now the workshops of Place Vendôme, Chanel’s devotion to tweed opens a new chapter in high jewelry. The camellia, the lion, and motifs from the Coromandel screens in Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s apartment are all signatures the company has reproduced in jewelry. However, mimicking the suppleness of a handwoven fabric in gold and gemstones is quite another achievement.

During her love affair with the duke of Westminster in the 1920s, Chanel acquired a taste for wearing tweed on his Highland estate. She saw opportunities for adapting the masculine cloth for womenswear, and it became a staple of her haute couture.

Not one to shy away from a challenge, the brand’s high-jewelry workshop has developed special articulation techniques to give its jewels the texture and flexibility of fabric, creating pieces that intertwine precious metal and gemstones on several planes. On its necklaces, cuffs and earrings, Chanel has used strings of pearls, diamonds and sapphires for the warp, and fine gold chains for the weft. Some designs weave a combination of gold chains together, while little diamond and pearl button earrings replicate the tweed buttons that one would find on a couture suit. 

Graff

At the end of 2020, Graff will mark 60 years of making some of the world’s most opulent diamond jewelry. The family business is synonymous with rare and famous diamonds like the 1,019-carat Lesedi La Rona, the Graff Pink and the deep-blue Wittelsbach-Graff. However, the house isn’t just about glorious, big-ticket statement stones; it has just introduced a new diamond collection called Threads, which features both one-of-a-kind high-jewelry creations and a wide selection of more accessibly priced, repeatable diamond jewels. Threads displays the characteristic know-how and skill of Graff’s workshops. Its geometric designs are reminiscent of the childhood game Pick-up Sticks, with bars of pavé and custom-cut diamonds layered at crisscrossing angles. The collection symbolizes modern-day hyper-connectivity — our social threads and networks.

“Threads reflects the pace of our modern lives,” explains Graff design director Anne-Eva Geffroy. “We are increasingly more active, seemingly always on the move. Connections are almost instantaneous.” The collection comprises pendants, earrings, bracelets and necklaces, as well as three spectacular high-jewelry suites in yellow and white diamonds, emeralds and diamonds, and just white diamonds. There’s also a Threads diamond tiara and a cute headband. The lowest-priced item is an $8,500 pendant.

Lydia Courteille

Paris-based jeweler Lydia Courteille admits she is no lover of amber. But two years ago, a visit to the fabled Amber Room in the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, Russia, near Saint Petersburg, sparked the idea for a collection. Constructed in the 18th century using several tons of the gemstone and gold leaf, the original Amber Room was considered the “eighth wonder of the world.” It was dismantled and eventually disappeared during World War II, but a reconstruction was completed in 2003.

The idea hung in Courteille’s mind until a dealer showed her a group of flat, free-shaped gemstones in shades of yellow, brown and orange. Her first designs reflect the color palette of the room, assembling citrines, white agate, fire opals, orange garnets, yellow sapphires, red jasper and dark rubellites into patchwork patterns for a necklace and series of earrings. Set in a mix of gold and greenish titanium, the designs echo 18th-century motifs: random clusters of gemstones and engraved gold leaves, intertwined with Art Nouveau stems and little gold cherubs. When complete, the Amber Room collection will consist of 12 designs in total — and, Courteille insists, “absolutely no amber!” 

Mikimoto and Comme des Garcons

Two Japanese powerhouses from the fashion and jewelry world have joined forces to reinvent the classic string of pearls, and the results challenge preconceptions of who can wear them. By draping sturdy sterling silver chains alongside Mikimoto’s lustrous pearls, Comme des Garcons has opened up these nacreous treasures to a new market: men.

“Recently, I’ve noticed how men also look good when they wear pearls — the starting point of this collaboration,” says Rei Kawakubo, founder and creative director of Comme des Garcons (a name that itself means “like the boys”). “A traditional company such as Mikimoto, with a 150-year-old history, clashing with a breaking of the rules can lead to something new.”

The seven necklaces in this capsule collection are exclusive to Mikimoto and retailer Dover Street Market, with prices ranging from $2,800 to $36,000. The two-year collaboration between the brands to adorn the necks of all, regardless of age or gender, represents not only Comme des Garcons’ first venture into jewelry, but also a new experience for Mikimoto, the originator of the cultured pearl.

David Morris

London jeweler David Morris is synonymous with the floral English garden style, but having recently hired designer Sumi Kim, formerly of Cartier, the brand is moving in a new direction. From now on, expect to see more geometry, symmetry and linear designs in David Morris collections.

The new Electric Geometric high-jewelry line is a perfect example — most notably the Boreas fan necklace, with its 77.59 carats of fancy-yellow and white diamonds, and earrings that resemble icicles (Boreas was the Greek god of winter). The flexible Hexagon cuff is another expression of the new geometry, mimicking a natural honeycomb with custom-cut brilliant, triangular, and other fancy-shaped white and pink diamonds. David Morris’s Waterfall earrings are popular, and Paraiba tourmalines are a favorite of managing director Jeremy Morris, so the company combined the two in its Waterfall Paraiba earrings — a frozen cascade of tourmalines and diamonds.

There is a lot of variety in the cut of the collection’s stones, from emerald-cut rubies in the Ruby Pirouette necklace and Creole earrings, to elongated cushion-cut diamonds in the Sunrise cuff, which has tiny hinges that let the bracelet lie flat when open. David Morris is taking a lot of risks with these more avant-garde designs; the cuffs took three years to perfect. However, a new decade has brought fresh optimism to the brand. 

Image: Chanel

Article from the Rapaport Magazine - April 2020. To subscribe click here.