The fall couture shows in Paris, which ended Thursday, were held earlier than their usual dates in July to avoid clashing with preparations for the Olympics, but the season still gave some Parisian luxury jewelry houses a chance to shine brightly to shine.
Their presentations capped a series of glamorous events across Europe, as several houses continued the trend of launching their debuts in luxury jewelery: Bulgari show 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 Forms of Color), was the largest the house had produced – and perhaps the most playful. For example, a freestyle brushstroke 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 marked the first time so many primary colors and rainbow palettes were used for jewelry.
“It took us a long time to create a lot of diamonds and colored gemstones,” says Pierre Hardy, creative director of Hermès jewelry since 2001 and of high jewelry since its introduction in 2010. “With leather, silk and makeup, you see how color influences the world of Hermès, but for jewelry we had never experimented with that kind of mix before.”
The designer described his creative process as “freeing color from minerality, cuts and facets to make it smoother, almost liquid or diffuse, like makeup on the body.”
Cultural touchstones also provided an unexpected source of inspiration. For example, the Supracolor necklace featured five strands of black and gray spinel beads anchored by a triangular centerpiece with a 1.1 carat diamond set in rutile quartz and surrounded by baguette diamonds, with a cascading, rainbow-like border of white beads, orange and gray moonstone , chalcedony, chrysoprase, rose quartz and pink tourmaline. Mr Hardy acknowledged that it bore a striking resemblance to the cover art of Pink Floyd’s 1973 album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’.
“It’s a real exercise in looking at pop culture on the one hand, and something scientific on the other, and turning it into something extremely precious,” said Mr. Hardy, who also used color to create signatures such as the Kelly watch bracelet again. offered in a white gold version completely paved with precious stones.
Even the house’s celebrated Birkin bag was displayed as a small but fully functional jeweled bag in white or yellow gold that was worked to mimic crocodile skin and then encrusted with nearly 3,000 diamonds, spessartites, aquamarines, amethysts and pink, blue and yellow sapphires.
Ombré colours, couture-inspired techniques and studies of fluidity were also in the spotlight at Piaget. The brand, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary, presented by appointment some jewels from the Essence of Extraleganza collection – a word it called a fusion of extravagance and elegance.
Rather than designing jewelery to a specific theme, Stéphanie Sivrière, the brand’s creative director of jewelery and watches, said she was inspired by the idea of ’everyday couture’ and using traditional goldsmithing techniques to produce metal mesh that is just as fluid is like the fabrics and decorations used. in high fashion.
“When we use gold, it is never smooth,” Ms. Sivrière said. “It is a material that always has character: it is hammered, braided, woven.
“These are pieces that really dress the wearer – they are a real second skin – so I really wanted to use color and contrast to bring out a playful side.”
The centerpiece piece in the collection, she says, is a cuff watch with a gold lattice bracelet set with baguette-cut Colombian emeralds and diamonds that appear to stretch around the square green enamel dial. There is also a V-shaped chain of small, hand-turned gold links set with a fiery 21.23-carat cushion-cut orange spessartite surrounded by diamonds, yellow sapphires and trapezoid-cut carnelian, set on a shimmy-like fringe.
The forty Piaget jewels on display in Paris represented about half of the entire collection of ninety pieces, which will be unveiled in Seoul later this year.
Travel impressions
Claire Choisne, creative director of Boucheron, drew from the rugged water scenes she saw during a spring trip to Iceland for a high jewelry collection called Carte Blanche, Or Bleu (in English, Blue Gold).
But instead of using color, the designer said, she wanted to depict water as if it were “frozen in its most raw state” — for example, waterfalls of diamonds on a transformable necklace or pools of rock crystal on a double-finger ring.
The 26 jewels include a cuff bracelet, called Eau d’Encre, or Ink Water, in titanium and white gold paved with calibrated diamonds and intersected by a wide band of polished obsidian, sculpted to resemble waves.
Ms Choisne said this was the first piece the house had produced using a combination of traditional knowledge and technology in jewelery making. A 3D simulation was used to reproduce the impression of a swirling sea, and the glassy rock was carved using specialized machines to obtain the most natural-looking relief.
As for the texture, the designer said, “It’s like an ode to the memory of water.”
