PARIS — Despite high jewelry collections blooming from Beverly Hills and Monaco to Vienna and Rome throughout the spring, there was no shortage of carat-filled creations on Place Vendôme shown during Paris Couture Week.
Houses such as Boucheron and Fred brought out new collections inspired by far-flung destinations, from the waters of Iceland to the lights of Buenos Aires. Others including Chaumet, De Beers Jewellers and Hermès went with graphic and nearly abstract interpretations of arts of the stage, Africa’s majestic fauna or color theory.
In addition to those who have long set their gilded salons in and around Place Vendôme, plenty more brands, including Damiani and Mikimoto, flocked to the French capital in a sure sign that the high jewelry segment is flourishing.
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Amid the ongoing luxury slowdown and continuing geopolitical turmoil, jewelry remains a top-performing category, particularly in the uber-luxe segment, according to a recent Altagamma-Bain analysis.
Talks of a downturn did not faze Tasaki chief executive officer Toshikazu Tajima. “In Japan, after the bubble bust [in the late 1980s], luxury grew,” he pointed out. “The same thing is happening in China.”
While aspirational consumers may curtail discretionary purchases altogether, upper middle class and high net-worth individuals continue to shop — at the best prices. For Tasaki, that translated into an uptick in sales from Chinese clients in Japan, for example.
“Luxury slowdown is happening but it’s a real good chance for a brand like us to catch up with the competitors running ahead of us,” he said.
The Japanese house presented the seventh iteration of the Atelier high jewelry collection plus its fourth collaboration with the Ritz Paris, with four chapters inspired by the hotel’s sparkling soirées, its iconic staircase or the style of its elegant denizens of the early 20th century.
Among the highlights were the Serenity necklace, inspired by the sea; a torque necklace ending with a spray of white and yellow diamonds to figure Champagne, fountains or fireworks; and the Harmonie Akoya pearl necklace, which could be transformed in multiple ways, including flipping around round motifs that had, say, a tanzanite on one side and a demantoid garnet on the other.
“It’s an activity that remains rather stable, albeit much more visible that it was before,” Compagnie Financière Richemont’s new CEO and incumbent Van Cleef & Arpels CEO Nicolas Bos told WWD of the high jewelry sector at an exhibition celebrating the first tome of the reasoned catalogue of its patrimonial collections. “It is not subject to the ups and downs that you can see in categories with higher volumes.”
But effervescence didn’t mean that clients will snap up any shiny bauble. A finely tuned balance of coherence with house heritage and new ideas is key to making a mark these days, in the executive’s opinion.
“Creativity is always good at the end of the day, regardless of the period. It’s not because the period is very positive for everyone that you should go for the low-hanging fruits because then you’re paving way for a downturn in the future,” Bos continued.
Think Different
“High jewelry is actually growing faster than [other] price ranges and this is the same for all brands. Business-wise, it is very important and exciting,” said Chaumet CEO Charles Leung. “On the other hand, [it] really defines the creativity and positioning of the brand.”
As clients grow ever more savvy and younger, strong ideas are becoming a non-negotiable third pillar, in addition to craftsmanship and precious materials.
“People want to see surprises, something different,” continued Leung. “When the house is rich and has different facets, we have to show [them]. For the customer, that’s refreshing.”
For Chaumet, that meant its long-standing love affair with the arts, with designs inspired by performing arts, music and magic.
Among the standouts were the Ballet necklace with sapphire and diamond-set white gold petals curling around for a helicoidal necklace finished with three Ceylon sapphires weighing between 5 and 8 carats, and the Tango necklace, featuring cushion- and pear-cut rubellites and tourmalines nestled in its white gold spirals that end with a 46-carat indicolite pear.
Diamonds remain a mainstay in high jewelry, and using them to their full potential was central to De Beers Jewellers’ “Forces of Nature” collection, which explored the animal kingdom through 58 designs inspired by lions, zebras or rhinoceros.
“We see a growing appetite for creative pieces in white or color diamonds that offer versatility,” said the jeweler’s CEO Céline Assimon. “Convertible headbands and necklaces, in particular, are highly sought after.”
Exhibit A: the Dignity tassel necklace set with 146 carats of pavé set white and rough brown diamonds meant to evoke the coat of a giraffe, with four parts that can be worn separately.
In addition to heirloom pieces featuring rare diamonds, high jewelry clients valued the distinctive use of rough stones and color gradients, Assimon continued.
Surprise and exploring jewelry crafts with new materials or techniques is the spirit behind Boucheron’s annual Carte Blanche collection. In this year’s “Or Bleu,” artistic director Claire Choisne took cues from Iceland and the many forms of water that can be found there, from frozen and frothy to inky blue and crystal clear.
A sinuous cascade slicing through the rocky landscape turned into an eponymous necklace flowing across the shoulders and coursing down the body with a five-foot-long river of 1,816 diamonds.
But it was the blending of traditional jewelry techniques with the playbook of other fields that yielded even more spectacular results.
“For me innovation is not [just] important, it’s the right thing to do to express the concept in the best way,” said Choisne.
There was 3D printing for a set featuring black sand into a hardwearing material with a very light iridescence. Software simulations helped the atelier carve rock crystal into a precious interpretation of the ripples caused by a falling drop for a plastron necklace that conformed to the body.
Computer assistance also came in handy to design and sculpt the statuesque and perfectly symmetrical “Eaux Vives” shoulder brooches, all aluminum and white diamonds.
It was reportedly the first piece to be snapped up, long before the opening of the couture week exhibition featuring atmospheric images of the places that had inspired Choisne by German photographer Jan Erik Waider.
Rainbows of unusual gemstones
More than ever, jewelers explored the vast array of tones and stones at their disposal, often offering rainbow-hued creations.
They came big like the amethysts and kunzites on Buccellati’s Cocktail rings, part of a showcase of a century’s worth of masterpieces from the Italian house that continued its anniversary exhibition from Venice, or small, like the Umba sapphires dotted in a gold mesh cuff in Cartier’s Tutti-tutti collection, part of its Cartier Libre designs.
At Hermès, stones were the starting point of creative director of jewelry Pierre Hardy’s exploration of the variations, vibrations and volumes that color can evoke, inspired by his art studies and color theory in particular.
“Stones are perfect for that because [their] shades are so delicate and sophisticated that it translates this well,” he said. “It’s fantastic seeing what effect they produce when you cut or carve them. It’s a two-step movement, with the depth [of the color] and the way it seems to expand.”
Epitomizing his inspiration was a necklace that brought to mind Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” album cover. Its multiple strands of pearls — white moonstone on one side, black and gray spinel on the other — turn into a rainbow of chalcedony, chrysoprase, rose quartz, and pink tourmaline as they connect to a prism-shaped central motif.
The “energy and magnetism” of stones is also what Eugenia Bruni, creative director of Pasquale Bruni, said guide her hand when selecting what she will turn into the creations of the house, which included an opulent necklace and adjoining suite of jewels featuring blush pink morganites.
Finding the best combination to express the lights and delights of South America was front and center at Fred, where creative director and vice president Valérie Samuel drew inspiration from her grandfather’s childhood in Argentina for a color-packed, four-chapter collection titled “Monsieur Fred Ideal Light.”
A three-row cascade necklace featured a mix of spinel, spessartite garnets and raspberry-hued rubellites with diamonds, while another included more than 120 pieces of carved lapis arranged to form one side of a cable-style rope.
“It’s more important today to find a beautiful natural colored gemstone with an intense color than to focus on appellations such as ruby, emerald or sapphire,” said Samuel.
“We all know this story of the spinel that was long thought to be a ruby on the Imperial State Crown of the United Kingdom. These are stones that are incredible and today, it’s difficult to find such exceptional materials.”
Dovetailing with this idea of growing scarcity pushing toward innovation was the mosaic of Opalazur, a specially developed doublet of natural turquoise and white opals with a striking iridescence used to great effect on a geometric set nodding to the Montserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires and the country’s traditional embroidered textiles.
Pearls Galore
One gemstone stood out during the summer high jewelry presentations in Paris: pearls.
They came in all sizes and shades, from lustrous white and grays to golden South Sea specimens and pink conch pearls.
“The pearl has been rid of its bourgeois side, earning its stripes as a cool and gender-fluid gem,” said Amélie Huynh, founder of Parisian label Statement. She also wanted to bring a softer side to the sharp outlines of her Art Deco-inflected designs, such as a large diamond-set motif central to one new necklace.
Despite their prominence and a growing appetite in fine jewelry, particularly for men, pearls could become rarer than other precious materials owing to the impact of climate change and water pollution on the oysters that produce them.
Hence the cautious approach of Mikimoto, despite growth that’s being seen particularly in the U.S. “We are always looking to expand but we are very careful because in general, pearls are getting scarcer,” said Kentaro Nishimura, chief operating officer of Mikimoto America. In recent decades, the production of cultured pearls has been declining constantly, particularly in the high jewelry quality, he added.
Not that you could tell from the profusion of lustruous orbs used throughout a collection that played on motifs of bows and ribbons. Thousands of Akoya pearls were woven together in a lace-like pattern for a necklace that looked like a scarf jauntily tied around the neck and held in place by a green tourmaline the size of a thumb.
Elsewhere, it was the even rarer and more fragile conch pearl that took pride of place on a lacy pearl collar or at the center of a diamond brooch.
In the second opus of Messika’s Midnight Sun collection, fronted by Natalia Vodianova and Lucien Laviscount, sizable golden South Sea pearls were used for the two-row Disco Pulsation choker necklace. Their aesthetic was echoed in rounded turquoise and sannan-skarn, a recently discovered fine-grained green stone from Pakistan.
Among the pieces Europe-based jewelry artist Anna Hu was showcasing was a 112.32 carat non-nacreous pearl that was the start of the “Dance of Dunhuang” brooch. The voluminous gemstone figuring the flower was edged in yellow and pink diamonds as well as orange and pink sapphires, with leaves made of green titanium.
Such rare natural gems are ideal to meet clients’ expectations not only for designs coming from “designer-artists, individuals with original concepts that cannot be replaced by AI,” said Hu, but also, “[They] are looking for heirlooms that cannot be repeated, copied or replicated.”
Independents Step Up
And this is where the growing contingent of smaller or newer signatures in Paris have a role to play, particularly with the space left by heavyweights like Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton showing in destination presentations at other times.
“There’s always space for independents,” said gemologist Christine Chen, who founded the Serendipity brand a decade ago. “We do pieces that are more personal or can really cater to the clients’ request like a made-to-measure couture outfit, right down to a specific stone and how an earring fits the ear.”
Hence why she showcased loose stones such as electric blue Paraiba tourmalines and pigeon-blood rubies alongside a 20-piece collection that included an Art Deco-influenced set featuring no-oil Colombian Muzo emeralds.
“It’s almost impossible to find two identical stones,” Chen said. “In addition to taste and personal favorites, there’s also serendipity at play because you cannot predict when you’ll see something you’ll like. If you want a D flawless diamond, you have dealers who can find me 10 options in five minutes. But a 3-carat, no-oil emerald from Colombia? It might take days — if you find one. That’s the beauty of it.”
Uniqueness aside, savvy jewelry enthusiasts also find another advantage to these rare finds.
“People want something unique but they also want to understand what they’re buying,” said Milan Ponweera, cofounder and gemologist of Maison Avani, a brand stemming from his family’s long tradition in sapphire mining. “If you’re looking for ethical jewels, you want to know where it comes from and for diamonds, it’s complex, except for a select few producers.”
While traceability of colored gems has not become the norm — although Louis Vuitton recently unveiled rubies with mine-to-jewel blockchain-backed records — it is easier to trace back their origin thanks to the elements that cause their hues, in addition to provenance being part of their certificates, he explained.
The increasingly ferocious competition among jewelers is pushing independents to be more daring.
“You can’t fight with the major houses on carat weight alone,” said Laure-Isabelle Mellerio, artistic director and president of Mellerio. “It’s design and a more experimental side that people come looking for with us, something ornamental rather than pure investment.
“Our proposal is unfussy jewels because we have seen that modifying wear and having something truly unique works very well,” she continued. A hit for the family-owned jeweler was its Talismans line. New in it was the “Nuit Étoilée” pendant studded with white opals and diamonds as well as yellow and blue sapphires that evoked a Van Gogh painting.
Despite its 125,000-euro price tag, “this kind of medal can be worn with a T-shirt and jeans,” said Mellerio. “In fact, some do just that.”
