This year's Haute Couture Fashion Week was not different from 2020 with most of the catwalk shows took place behind closed doors or switched to digitally streamed events, and the world's most prestigious jewellery Maisons unveiled their latest Haute Joaillerie Creations. Some of the spectacular, high jewellery collections were created despite the lockdown and were presented on time. The clients and fans welcomed a sparkling dose of beauty and craft virtuosity: salve for the soul in the greyest of winters. Many jewellers managed to unveil truly spectacular jewellery collections this season, inspired by everything from the natural world to NASA.
I have selected some of the sparkling highlights worth dreaming about here for your attention.
Chanel
Created to celebrate 100 years of Chanel’s iconic N°5 perfume with a gleaming 55.55-carat diamond necklace and a collection of 123 high jewellery pieces around the necklace, showcasing all the facets of a fragrance, interpreting the N°5 perfume, from the bottle to the sillage. The main highlight of the Collection N°5 is the extraordinary 55.55 necklace that expresses all the codes of the fragrance which radiate through a splendid gemstone crafted in its honour: the 55.55-carat custom-cut diamond a D flawless in emerald cut and combined with the 18-carat white gold bezel set with 104 round diamonds and 42 baguette diamonds showcases Chanel’s exceptional levels of high jewellery creation.
Dior
In tribute to the passion Christian Dior had for roses, the Creative Director of Dior Joaillerie, Victoire de Castellane, transforms the couturier’s favourite flower into precious lucky charms, made of textured stone-paved petals and thorny stems in the Rose Dior jewellery. The collection counts 54 pieces, some transformable pieces included a necklace in pink gold with a diamond rose that can be clipped off and worn as a brooch, while a diamond necklace with a ruby blossom can be worn as a bracelet. Victoire de Castellane is famous for her ability to combine abstract and figurative jewellery by emphasizing her focus on colours and looking to amplify the qualities of each precious gemstone in the hope of creating elegant and timeless roses in full bloom!
Boucheron
For Boucheron’s latest high jewellery collection, Histoire de Style, creative director Claire Choisne delved into the brand’s extensive archive of Art Deco designs inspired many of the pieces in the collection, spanning the ’20s through the ’40s, to turn out jewels fitting for a modern-day woman and man. Reflecting the need for today’s jewellery to perform from day to night, Choisne made them convertible for Histoire de Style Art Déco high jewellery collection 2021. Especially this fascinating Lavallière diamond, onyx and black lacquer necklace set in 18-karat white gold can be worn as a red-carpet-ready piece or you can detach its centrepiece to wear the necklace like a collar or wear the pendant, as a brooch or alone.
If bow-ties have essentially served as baroque ornaments in the history of High Jewelry, here is a pure bow-tie, enhanced by the black and white contrast, Noeud diamants. One elegant bow-tie design in diamonds and black lacquer was originally a simple brooch created in 1925. But this time around, Claire Choisne’s creative eye made it a brooch, a bow-tie or even a solitaire ring – and, when wrapped around the solitaire diamond, as a dramatic and devastatingly chic couture bow-tie ring, faithful to Boucheron’s multi-wear tradition. Photos courtesy of Boucheron.
Van Cleef & Arpel
For its new high jewellery collection, the storied French house turned towards the stars, aptly named “Sous Les étoiles” (Under the stars). The Van Cleef & Arpels rediscovers a theme dear to its identity: the universe and its infinite resources. From the Milky Way to comets, via the planets and stars of the solar system, 150 new creations evoke with their exceptional gems the celestial wonders in their multiple forms and handcrafted by the jewellers who worked with the most recent NASA images, popular science books, and even the oldest myths about the universe and its planets.
Buccellati
Buccellati Haute Couture 2021 jewels are all one-of-a-kind pieces, hand-crafted which will not have replicas, and their value is immense and their beauty is evident and unveiled. Jewels that highlight Buccelatti’s savoir-faire and its centuries-old goldsmith traditions. Creative Director of the Maison, Andrea Buccellati, increasingly proposes his elegant taste and his vision of jewellery, building on these traditions, playing on themes of light to weave open-worked honeycomb patterns of diamond lace. Every part of the latticed gold has been delicately engraved, which culminate in the “Polvere di Luna” set. The iconic Buccellati bracelets enchant with their innovative design: the "Ortensia" bracelet recalls the colour and euphoria of the flower, it is being so imperfectly spherical and so delicately coloured, while the "Honey-heart" bracelet offers a centre to a solar motif with a delicate and light honeycomb patterns. The flexible bracelet, a unique and precious work of art, the result of hours of drilling and hand-engraving, is knitted from groups of white gold leaves and set with diamonds.
Cocktail rings are innovative and impressive, the "Passion" ring’s centre around a precious stone, surrounding a rubellite with diamond leaves or whilst the "Mont Blanc" ring pushes its round pearl upwards like the top of a mountain and shows a very geometric and modern decoration all around the bezel and along the entire stem.
