The fall couture shows in Paris, which ended Thursday, were held earlier than the usual July dates to avoid clashing with preparations for the Olympic Games, but the season still offered some Parisian high jewelry houses a chance to shine brightly.
Their presentations capped a series of glamorous events around Europe, as several houses continued the trend of taking high jewelry debuts on the road: Bulgari showed in Rome; Cartier in Vienna; Chanel in Monaco; Dior in Florence, Italy; and Louis Vuitton in St.-Tropez, France.
In Paris, the 67-piece Hermès collection, Les Formes de la Couleur (the Shapes of Color), was the largest the house had produced — and arguably its most playful. A freestyle brushstroke, for example, was rendered as a mono-earring called Fresh Paint, with green tsavorite garnets simulating pigment.
And while the house has nearly 75,000 shades in its silk color library, the collection was the first time it had used so many primary colors and rainbow palettes for jewelry.
“It took us a long time to do a lot of diamonds and colored gemstones,” said Pierre Hardy, the creative director of Hermès jewelry since 2001 and of high jewelry since its introduction in 2010. “With leather, silk and makeup, one sees how color informs the world of Hermès, but for jewelry we’d never experimented with that kind of mix before.”
