The Most Jaw

Jul 01, 2023

By Rachel Garrahan

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.

Left earring by Graff, right earring by De Beers, necklace by Boucheron.

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.

By Daniel Rodgers

By Hannah Coates

By Lucrezia Malavolta

Earring by Cartier.

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.

By Daniel Rodgers

By Hannah Coates

By Lucrezia Malavolta

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 detached and worn as a brooch.

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.

By Daniel Rodgers

By Hannah Coates

By Lucrezia Malavolta

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.

By Daniel Rodgers

By Hannah Coates

By Lucrezia Malavolta

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.

By Daniel Rodgers

By Hannah Coates

By Lucrezia Malavolta

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.

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.

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.