PARIS —- January is the quieter of the two couture seasons when it comes to displays of haute joaillerie.
With many top clients preferring to spend summer in the City of Light rather than the short chilly days of winter, some houses prefer to keep their shimmering meditations on the power of work done by hand under wraps until later in the year.
But not all.
Houses like Graff — known for its expertise with large diamonds, like the Lesedi La Rona, a 302.37-carat stone that is the world’s largest emerald-cut diamond — put on quiet presentations of a handful of new design pieces.
Others — like Louis Vuitton, which this month announced it had bought the 1,758-carat Sewelo, the second-largest diamond in history — put on a showcase of stones. Or in the case of Vuitton, that one very large stone, which will be sent to Antwerp, Belgium, to be cut into smaller stones that can be worked into pieces codesigned by some of the house’s most important customers.
And then there were those houses that were determined to put on a show.
Here is a rundown of what we saw in and around the Place Vendôme.
CHANEL
Tweed de Chanel
Tweed has been synonymous with Chanel ever since Coco transposed it from men’s to women’s fashions in the 1920s.
But for the first time, the house this month took its inspiration for a high jewelry collection from the textured cloth that originates in Scotland.
Set amid soft sprigs of purple heather, bagpipes in the background, the 45 pieces on display had all the color and texture hallmarks of tweed, realized in a sparkling array of precious metals and stones rather than wool.
Take the Tweed D’Or necklace, fashioned into a collar of crisscross intertwined layers of 18-karat gold and platinum, with cultured pearls, diamonds and one oval-cut topaz at the center, plus a pair of round earrings — inspired by jacket buttons — to match.
A secret watch, the industry term for a timepiece with some kind of cover to keep the dial hidden, was created in yellow gold and finished with a house signature mix of white diamonds and black onyx with a strand of pearls running around the wrist.
And another necklace — the Tweed Couture — imitated the irregular weave of colored tweed by creating a fluid fan of strands set with diamonds, pink sapphires and spinels, interlaced with a lattice of fine gold yarn. Perfect for anyone with a need for tweed.
DIOR
Dior et Moi
For her latest collection, called Dior et Moi, Victoire de Castellane looked to a romantic style of ring known as “toi et moi”: two gems that sit side by side or close to each other on a band, symbolizing two souls becoming one.
Traditionally, the two stones are of a similar cut and carat; Ms. de Castellane, however, has never done anything by the book in her more than 20 years as Dior’s creative director of jewelry.
An explosion of colors, mismatched sizes and styles — with the flavor of her anniversary collection presented last summer in Venice — brought some contemporary charm to an old idea in this 39-piece collection. There was a set of rings in turquoise and pink sapphires, for example, designed to sit at different levels on the same finger and connected by a chain. And a pair of earrings with one small pink pearl stud teamed with a larger opal that dangled on a chain, encircled by a pavé pattern of tiny precious stones — mandarin garnets, peridots, emeralds and purple sapphires — looking like the colors of the rainbow on brushed gold.
Some larger, more conventional high jewelry pieces also were on offer: a rubellite bangle, finished in pink gold and lacquer, for example, or a showstopper teardrop opal and diamonds on a string of pearls.
It all felt very quirky and abstract, with a heavy dose of Parisian charm.
BOUCHERON
Signature
The big reveal at Boucheron this season was of eight new Question Mark necklaces, an original asymmetric design created by Frédéric Boucheron in the 1870s that loops around a wearer’s neck, leaving a gap in front between the two ends. But at least one of those ends has a striking embellishment encapsulating the atelier’s creative flair and imaginative whims.
Claire Choisne, the house’s creative director, unveiled several designs that would feel familiar to Boucheron devotees: a shimmering set of golden wheat stalks, for example, or curling acanthus leaves (Feuilles d’Acanthe), all fully articulated to move with the wearer and delicately balanced to sit comfortably across the neck and collarbone.
Another piece inspired by tumbling hydrangeas involved scanning each petal of the flowers before recreating them in mother-of-pearl and covering them in pavé diamond; it took 520 hours of work. In a next door salon the color of candy floss, was a selection of pieces in frosted diamonds and rock crystal, set amid bonbons and jelly beans, for those who like something sweet to finish.
CHOPARD
Exceptional Stones
There was a surprise in store for those who came to Paris’s Place Vendôme, the world epicenter of haute joaillerie, for the latest Chopard collection, Exceptional Stones.
Set among a bed of flowers in kaleidoscopic hues were a series of stunning stones in glass cabinets: a large emerald-cut 33.26-carat fancy yellow diamond; two near-identical round Colombian emeralds of, respectively, 32 carats and 36 carats; a triangular-cut 34.63-carat tourmaline from Mozambique, among several others.
But the intricate designs that eventually would turn them into necklaces, earrings and rings were there in sketch form only, displayed outside the cases. It was a smart idea that enhanced the natural beauty of the gems, though there were plenty of other finished pieces from the Red Carpet collection on display nearby for those who needed something more tangible.
One jewelry trend coming in hot from Hollywood? A preference for yellow over white diamonds, a Chopard representative said, as some actresses say the stones look less harsh against their skin.
CINDY CHAO THE ART JEWEL
Black Label
Cindy Chao founded her company, Cindy Chao The Art Jewel, in 2004. Sixteen years later and the Taiwanese jewelry designer was in Paris to celebrate, not just the addition of her Ruby Butterfly brooch to the permanent collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs with a glittering dinner Monday, but also the completion of several new pieces for her Black Label collection.
Two standouts glimmered in the suite at the Ritz Paris: The Aurora Butterfly brooch had an aluminum thorax with four pigeon blood Burmese rubies, each weighing two carats. And from that metal body, three layers encrusted with a total of 6,023 small precious stones — particularly sapphires and yellow diamonds — took flight as the butterfly’s wings.
And the Emerald Sculptural Bangle, centered around a 7.61-carat heart-shaped Colombian emerald, with 5,305 shards of diamonds, sapphires, demantoids, garnets and other gems hammered into its 18-karat gold band, was a feat of engineering thanks to five hidden joints that allow it to lie completely flat when not on the wearer’s wrist.
