Paris High Jewelry Shines At Couture Week

As Paris sizzled under a heatwave last week, heritage houses and independents alike showed their latest fine jewelry collections, in and around Place Vendôme. Paris high jewelry highlights at Couture Week, in alphabetical order.

Anna Hu

In a departure from recent seasons, Anna Hu went big on gemstones, with glorious cabochons of emeralds and raspberry tourmalines in two parures. Both were inspired by flora, one of the house’s signature themes. Jardin Eméraude de Monte-Carlo paid tribute the cliffside Exotic Garden of Hu’s Mediterranean home, in Zambian emeralds that had taken years to colour-match, reinterpreting dynastic jewelry. Meanwhile, Route des Fleurs Impériales blended Eastern civilisation and Parisian elegance with electric pink tourmalines that felt otherwordly.

Boucheron

Like rain falling on hot skin, Boucheron‘s Human Being collection presentation was a balm for troubled times. Five necklaces and matching rings with identical silhouettes were produced using different materials and techniques, including laser-engraved onyx and perfectly matched morganite. The Victorian tattoo intaglios created by a glyptic artist on smokey quartz, and the micro-painter’s tiny Indian blooms on pink quartz foregrounded an astonishing level of craftsmanship in pieces that took up to 3000 hours to make. Just like these necklaces, the collection underscored the fundamental humanity of the world we live in: that we are all the same, but different.

Buccellati

The Milanese house doubled down on its heritage with a spectacular bi-color openwork collection honouring the city of Venice and its lacemaking tradition. The Serenissima collection spotlights the work of the house’s master goldsmiths who created the lace patterns by hand by cutting into sheets of gold. Modellato engraving and mirror-polished settings came together in a truly exquisite collection.

Chaumet

Famously inspired by nature, this season, Chaumet took a different tack, combining literal and abstract interpretations of the tastes and sensations of different plants and raw materials. Tea found expression in aquamarine, pearls and diamonds, an explosion of white diamonds conveyed peppercorns, and a swirl of playful Madagascan sapphires and diamonds expressed the caffeine hit of the coffee plant.

Damiani

Damiani looked to some of the most famous artworks in history for the Arte Maestra collection. From Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in warm-toned diamonds, to Klimt’s The Kiss, deconstructed into Art Deco shards, the collection was both ambitious and beautifully executed. The masterpiece however, was Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa, a frothy tumble of sapphires and tourmalines accented with a trillion-cut diamond, blurring the line, once again, between art and adornment.

David Morris

David Morris showed some astonishing stones, including a 184-carat sapphire, and several lagoon-blue paraiba tourmalines. Inspiration channelled the light and color of hot summer days, including Greek basketry in the Kalamos set above, which included 98carats of Colombian emeralds that had taken five years to source and colour-match. The geometric diamond stands below, referenced woven reeds.

De Beers London

Alongside a new four-piece Lotus collection, De Beers London updated the signature Talisman collection, pairing rough and polished diamonds in warm desert hues. A bold new medallion combined yellow rough diamonds with brown and white polished diamonds, set in poinçon-finish gold, created with a pyramid-shaped chisel.

Dior

Happily for the Maison, many of the Diorissima pieces had already sold by the time they made it to Paris last week, but that didn’t stop Dior putting on an impressive presentation that featured high jewelry alongside their 3D-printed maquettes in an insight into the creative process. As ever, creative director Victoire de Castellane’ humour and creativity produced singular pieces based around the flora, fauna, aquatic and celestial themes that are dear to the house. The collar above, uses six different types of doublet gem-layering technique to create particular intensity of color.

Graff

Usually known for its diamond work and in particular, signature yellow diamonds, London-based Graff tore up their usual rule book to present a suite of 12 high jewelry butterfly brooches using materials less-often seen in the house’s jewels, like pearls, baguette emeralds, pink opal and onyx. Each one was set en tremblant, bringing a range of techniques to a masterful collection.

Gucci

Gucci’s latest high jewelry offering was an opus in four parts; Fora, Noda, Everlasting G and Iconic Signatures. Leveraging Italian expertise, the Flora strand of the collection included a brooch depicting the lily, a symbol of Florence, in titanium, delicately set with a graduation of blue sapphires.

Hermes

Hermès’ Into the Horsescape collection, the latest of its bi-annual high jewelry presentations, cantered through the equestrian motifs that run through the Maison’s jewelry. “The horse itself is barely seen,” said creative director Pierre Hardy, “but its symbolism lives within each piece.” The Clou de Forge Lumière necklaces references the nails used to attach horseshoes, using diamonds set in a staggered arrangement to create texture.

Mellerio

France’s oldest jeweler re-visited a patent held by the house since 1951 this season, to produce three sets of gemstones nails. Designed to be worn individually or as a full set, gold latticework is punctuated with tutti fruity sapphires, onyx or white diamond, in a contemporary piece that sets the standard for nail art. Elsewhere, were new iterations of the Asteria talisman pendants, in tantalum, a little-used precious metal of a heavy, pewter hue, which was striking alongside yellow and white gold versions.

Messika

Messika revealed their latest masterpieces during Couture Week, including a diamond rivière necklace including the largest blue diamond ever unearthed in Botswana; the Okavango Blue. It was the centrepiece of a collection wholly inspired by the flora, fauna and terrain of the Okavango Delta. Diamond and opal prisms channeled the teeth of the crocodiles who live in the river, a brown diamond choker referenced the valley’s pythons, and the salt pans and flamingos came to life in gemstones and metal.

Mikimoto

The Japanese pearl house used a variety of coloured gemstones and diamonds for their latest high jewelry collection, including emeralds, tourmalines, sapphires, and an astonishing 100-carat aquamarine. The L’Eclat collection explored the properties of light, from the Northern Lights to starlight and the gentle light of the ocean floor as coloured gems enriched the natural radiance of the house’s signature pearls.

Pomellato

The Palais de Tokyo is currently the setting for Pomellato’s first exhibition in Paris, and anyone who had seen the show would recognise the house’s design DNA in the Stile Libero high jewelry collection. Alongside a rainbow of colors in typically flamboyant pieces, warm-toned diamonds accentuated the characteristic chunky volume that nods to the brand’s 1970s heyday. Elsewhere, a collaboration with French artisan Sarah Bran produced a series of hand-cut openwork pieces set with diamonds.

Repossi

To celebrate 40 years on Place Vendôme, Repossi honoured the square’s famous central column, with a capsule of gem-set pieces that mirror the same grey-green color. In earrings, earcuffs, a brooch and an open ring, serti sur vide indicolite tourmalines, aquamarines and green tourmalines appeared to float across the body. Elsewhere, the Maison also celebrated the pear-cut diamond and fancy colored diamonds in its signature setting.

The best of the independent designers who also showed in Paris last week.

Charlote Chesnais

With sizeable blush baroque pearls and bold commitment stacks, Charlotte Chesnais’ high jewelry line continues to evolve. Wedding adjacent-stacks reinterpret her signature motifs Twin and Round Trip that combines diamond solitaires, pave eternity bands and wedding bands in glorious swirls of gold.

Cora Sheibani at Christie’s

The ultimate colonist, Cora Sheibani held a showcase at Christie’s during Couture Week, spotlighting key pieces from over two decades of jewellery design. Moonstone, pearls and hard stones all featured in the work on display, as well as a magnificent speckled jasper and brass composite

Lily Gabriella

Alongside favorites from her color-rich collections, Lily Gabriella showed one-off special editions including the brown titanium swirl earrings. Cognac diamonds trace the curves of a familiar motif, in a lightweight earring, while elsewhere, the designer also debuted a new line of customisable snakeskin necklaces, with custom-dyed skin-covered beads interspersed with diamond separators.

Lito

Greek jeweller Lito’s latest collection was an ode to the scarab beetle as a luminous symbol of eternal beauty and transformation. Sourced at the Parisian auction house Deyrolles, the collection of rare beetles was preserved in gold and accented with tonal stones, each one with a custom-created ceramic habitat by the ceramist Diane Alexandre.

Lola Fenhirst

Known for her refined Afro-modernist jewelry, the Nigerian-British designer Lola Fenhirst launched a new capsule that signalled a fresh direction, from a Paris rooftop. Months in development, the Indigo Pit ring references the Koran Mata dye pits in northern Nigeria, established in the 16th century to produce indigo cloth created using natural ingredients for the Tuareg people. Across West Africa, indigo is a color of protection, and Fenhirst carefully matched aluminium to the deep indigo of lapis lazuli, ringed with yellow diamonds, in a modern-day talisman, made in Paris.

Marie Mas

A hit at Couture Las Vegas, Caustic Light, Marie Mas’s latest collection is completely transformable thanks to patented systems. Slim diamond pave bangles become oversized hoops, while squiggles of white diamonds detach from their feature stone to becomes brooches, signalling new ways to wear jewelry that chimes with the daily lives of her collectors, according to the designer.

Nikos Koulis

Nikos Koulis welcomes press and clients to a carefully designed space at his new Paris flagship, to view his new collection, alongside familiar pieces. The 77 collection pairs diamonds with custom tortoiseshell acetate — real tortoiseshell is a protected material — to spectacular effect, creating an unconventional combination designed to create a new play on light, and question notions of preciousness.

Sarah Ysabel Dyne

Sarah Ysabel presented a new chapter of the Protection collection, exploring the psychological condition of protection through form, color and finish. Dyne had looked to the Soviet architect Galina Balashova who explored similar concepts for the Soviet space program, to create feel-good rounded forms that hug the body. A gentle palette of blue sapphires, white diamonds, sandblasted metal and mother-of-pearl was offset with reverse-set diamond pavé, providing the cool-girl edge that makes Dyne so covetable.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com