More discreet than the thirty fashion shows that marked Paris Couture Week at the end of January, the high jewelry presentations nevertheless held some nice surprises.
Like the Dior Délicat collection, which pays a delicate homage to embroidery and lace through seventy-nine pieces crafted to fit the curves of the neck, wrist and hand.
In majesty, rubies, emeralds, blue sapphires, rubellites and tanzanites highlight these jewels with their colorful brilliance.
Read alsoThe Vendôme column, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for jewelers
At Boucheron, it is the world of ceremonial clothing that inspired the creative director, Claire Choisne, to create aiguillettes, buttons, epaulettes, diamond and rock crystal medals, playing on light, transparency and sandy effects with elegant sensuality.
The Power of Couture, which has twenty-four pieces, also strives to highlight jewelry know-how, in particular glyptics, this art of cutting stones which makes it possible to reproduce here the effects of knitting or even large ribbon grain on rock crystal.
The workshops did not count their hours: two thousand six hundred for the impressive Knot necklace.
A precious creative breath
In images, in pictures
See the slideshow12 photos
See the slideshow12 photos
Faceted flora
Classic inspiration, nature takes on radically different appearances depending on the jeweler.
For her fifth high jewelry collection at Louis Vuitton, Francesca Amfitheatrof continues her terrestrial exploration with fifty new unique pieces, including a series of seven dedicated to plants for the first time, where a generous foliage of Zambian emeralds and diamonds, sometimes enhanced with rubies, blossoms on a set gold twist.
Water lily, rose, lotus, the flowers perfume the Hortense collection, from Avani Paris, a pioneering family house in ethical sapphire, which highlights this stone, but also tsavorites and Mahenge spinels, a highly sought-after variety which is distinguished by its color from intense pink to deep red.
As for the British jeweler David Morris, he dreams of the Northern Lights, predominantly green, interpreted by a harmony of emeralds and diamonds, or – as is more rarely the case – blue, embodied by Sri Lankan sapphire and Paraíba tourmalines, the house's favorite stones.
New bestiaries
Piaget is continuing the Metaphoria collection, begun last July, in which it celebrates the year of the Dragon with, for the first time, pieces of jewelry in addition to watchmaking creations: a brooch and two rings bearing its image, but also Phénix ear jewelry.
Chaumet has focused its new high jewelry capsule around the face, with a virtuoso ballet of birds in four variations.
Tiaras, hair ornaments, brooches, ear adornments, these precious and light feathers celebrate the work of gold as well as the transformability of jewelry, two historic assets of the house.
More earthly, and as a tribute to the country that produces its extraordinary diamonds, De Beers presented, in London, eight rings inspired by the emblematic animals of South Africa: the lion, the rhino, the leopard, the zebra, the elephant, buffalo, giraffe and greater kudu.
The evocations are not literal but magnify certain details, such as the leopard's eyes interpreted by two marquise diamonds or the horns of the greater kudu represented by two twists of gold and diamonds.
Piaget.
Efflorescens necklace in yellow gold, white gold, diamonds and emerald, Metaphoria collection.
Press photo
Multiple Odysseys
From the ode to nature to the celebration of elsewhere, there is only one step that Cartier continues to take with the third chapter of its Le Voyage Recommencé collection.
With an abstract bias, the house on rue de la Paix suggests the sea – which we imagine Mediterranean, with turquoise cabochons – and other regions in a geometric spirit where the purity gives pride of place to gems, notably a 29.16-carat Ceylon sapphire and octagonal, intense green Colombian emeralds.
Bulgari also continues its long-term journey, Mediterranea, with pieces in astonishing colors, such as cabochon rubellite associated with amethyst and pink tourmaline.
It was the
matronae
, these women admired in ancient Rome for their sense of aesthetics, who inspired these joyful and elegant jewelry.
Exotic fruits dictated other combinations, such as amethyst married to peridot or tourmaline, while the faithful snake takes its place in a monochrome of mother-of-pearl and diamonds.
The Roman micromosaic specialist, Le Sibille, leaves the earth to fly into space where the Galaxies, title of the collection, infuse their mysterious aesthetic into jewelry that looks like distant stars.
Cartier.
Necklace in white gold, diamonds and emeralds, High Jewelry collection.
Press photo
The stone at the beginning
These capital inspirations should not make us forget that the jeweler's work begins above all with the stone.
At Graff, diamonds, yellow and white, take center stage, but other precious stones, rubies, emeralds and sapphires, also deliver their bouquet of bright colors.
On the carat side, special mention for the incredible 118.17 carat sapphire mounted on a white gold cuff.
Chopard preferred to sublimate the opal in the center of a necklace, by framing it with rows of tanzanites with blue-violet reflections, and the sapphire, with an 88.88 carat specimen whose openwork gold setting brings its Royal color to life Blue on a dazzling ring.
Repossi is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Serti sur Vide, a collection where stones seem to float, with new pieces, including a sublime openwork cuff.
Finally, among the recently resurrected jewelers, Rouvenat, which promotes the house's archives while offering modern and circular jewelry based on old stones and recycled gold, offers its Frame ring in six proposals.
The principle ?
A gem highlighted by a sophisticated and different entourage each time.
A success.