Last week, as part of the summer high jewellery collection previews, on show alongside the Paris Couture schedule, Chanel transformed the Place Vendôme, Paris’ most prestigious octagonal enclave, into a field of gold by way of Gad Weil’s natural wheat installation. It was part celebration of its ‘Les Blés de Chanel’ high jewellery collection, where wheat is the key design motif, and part public art show. As people stopped to simply look or meander through it, it was a magical reminder of nature’s power to inspire. Hence, from Chaumet’s diamond oak leaves to Chanel’s yellow-gold sheaves and Van Cleef & Arpels’ emerald water lilies, the natural world triumphed as the key creative force in everything we saw.
Here’s a further glimpse of what was on view...
Writers: Caragh McKay, Katrina Israel
Van Cleef & Arpels: Carved, beaded, precision cut: emeralds in all forms were the focus of the ‘Émeraude en Majesté’ collection by Van Cleef & Arpels. The presentation was held at the house’s new Jouin Manku-designed Place Vendôme boutique, in a room designed specifically for display. Its subtle tone served the purpose well, allowing the creations to speak for themselves. The collection was traditional in feel and the deep green stones central to the designs were as rich, characterful and majestic as the collection name suggests. But it was the metal work, white gold, twisted, turned, looped and merged in unexpected, sculptural forms, that truly mesmerised.
Writer: Caragh McKay
Piaget: This year, the Geneva watchmaker-cum-jeweller significantly stepped up its presence at Paris high jewellery week. And rightly so. As the 1970s feel continues to permeate the jewellery mood, you catch glimpses of the Piaget style everywhere. The house created a design language all its own in the heady decade, with its daring use of semi-precious hard stones and an emphasis on unique in-house goldworking techniques, typified by an organic, tree-bark-like look. Today, it is moving forward with those key factors in place but with less reliance on the past and a more glamorous spirit than before. Encapsulated in the atmosphere of a poolside party, à la Palm Springs 1972, the unashamedly named ‘Sunny Side of Life’ collection is made up of a staggering 150 pieces. The handworked white gold cuff bracelets, particularly the pieces with crazy-paving slices of pool blue lapis lazuli and exotic feather marquetry, were outstanding examples of Piaget’s unique take.
Writer: Caragh McKay
Dior: Never one to shy away from ostentation, Victoire de Castellane looked to France’s seat of power, prestige and privilege, the Château de Versailles, for Dior’s latest high jewellery collection. Just as Christian Dior designed dresses that drew upon its gilded grandeur, de Castellane was moved by micro details from its lavish interiors. A diamond drop necklace recalled an ornate curtain tassel, chandelier earrings were plucked from the palace’s grand ballrooms, the use of oxidised silver on a bracelet channelled the contents of the silver safe, while towering rings rippling with multi-cut gems resembled sparkling antique mirrors. One especially baroque setting stood an inch above the finger – perhaps a nod to the height of wigs worn at the time. The presentation space itself, lit by flickering light at the creative director’s insistence – ‘I tried to imagine Versailles by night, with its interiors illuminated by candlelight that makes gemstones sparkle’ – also sampled the Hall of Mirror’s density of gilt chandeliers. And as if in awe of the scale of Versailles, with 60 pieces, this is Dior’s largest ever collection.
Writer: Katrina Israel
Hermès: To celebrate his 15th anniversary at Hermès, Pierre Hardy looked to the sands of time and the reaches of the solar system for his latest ‘Continuum’ haute bijouterie collection. Of course, everything at this house is built to last, and this tale spanned three temporal concepts at the Paris presentation designed by Didier Faustino (pictured right). ‘Three different sensations, on three different perceptions of time,’ Hardy explained. The first worked with a rose gold outline that formed hourglass shapes set with giant grey and white pearls in gradating hues representing the passage of time like a modern rosary. The second, a more graphic series, followed time via a sundial, while the final traced the dawn hues of a sunrise in brilliant gemstones, which formed radiating lines of colour. This idea came from a photography series that captured the turn of the earth every hour that Hardy had seen on social media. ‘All the same but all different,’ he maintained. ‘This is exactly how I feel about time: always the same, always different.’
Photography: François Goizé; Writer: Katrina Israel
Chanel: Owing to its status as a symbol of regeneration, it was fitting for Chanel to launch its latest high jewellery collection, entirely dedicated to the wheat sheaf, within the newly refurbished Coco Chanel suite of the Ritz Paris. Every inch of the apartment was planted with the grain that has long been a emblem of good luck for Gabrielle Chanel. Keeping with the theme, a gold wheat-legged Goossens coffee table, a replica of a similar piece from Mademoiselle Chanel’s apartment, was joined by a new addition for the presentation: an unframed Salvador Dalí painting of a sheaf that was a gift to his friend and still lives in Chanel’s Rue Cambon apartment. With its bucolic colour palette following the wheat cycle, ‘Les Blés de Chanel’s’ peridots, green tourmalines and aquamarines joined white and yellow diamonds in the spring, before yellow sapphires completed the harvest. Marquise-cuts defined each stalk, arranged in numerous variations. But the queen of this crop was easily the ‘Fête des Moissons’ necklace featuring a 25 carat diamond, cut in the shape of Place Vendôme, along with sprigs of braided wheat, the beauty of which dulled the need for antihistamines.
Writer: Katrina Israel
