Paris Fashion Week: The Jewelry Highlights

Paris Fashion Week: The Jewelry Highlights

Ready-to-Wear Week played out under the Parisian sunshine this season. From the French heritage houses on Place Vendôme, to independent brands presenting their latest jewels at showrooms and luxury hotel around the city, some jewels of spectacular diversity were on show.

Place Vendôme, the heartland of luxury jewelry at Paris Fashion Week

The Week kicked off with an invitation to the Chopard Hotel on Place Vendôme, the brand’s in-the-know private luxury residence., where Artistic Director and co-Chairwoman Caroline Scheufele presented the 15-piece Insofu collection, showcasing the stones cut from a 6,225-carat rough Zambian emerald acquired by the house in 2022.

A tense nine-month cutting process resulted in a harvest of 850 carats of emeralds, which were poured into a high jewelry collection made up of five pairs of earrings, four necklaces, three rings, a bracelet and a jewelry watch. Each set was paired with its own custom couture outfit, and Scheufele herself was wearing the collection’s hero piece: an elephant-shaped pendant, tusks up for good fortune, which can also be worn as a brooch.‘Insofu’ means ‘elephant’ in Bemba, the local language where the stone was mined.

Across the other side of the famous square, Boucheron also showed transformable jewelry, with extendable necklaces featuring floral pendants that could also be worn as brooches. The Serpent Bohème collection was based on an archive piece from 1974, a gold chain with an oversized coral and onyx flower motif, and the modern jewels were worn by miniskirt-clad models walking the salons to a soundtrack of French Seventies pop music. Earrings, cocktail rings and necklaces made up the fine jewelry collection, with a diamond-encrusted high jewelry sautoir also in the mix.

In their hôtel particulier opposite, Chaumet showed an update to the newly rebranded Bee de Chaumet collection, with supremely stackable bangles and rings alongside highly desirable hexagonal beehive earcuffs. Meanwhile, in a salon overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, Dior presented an upcoming update to the emblematic Rose des Vents collection, alongside jewelry watches and new additions to the Diorette and Diorigami lines, featuring innovative, Japanese-inspired shapes cut from hard stone.

Paris Fashion Week showrooms

Maison Pyramide showed jewelry brands including the Ukrainian house Guzema, whose hit pave Quintet ear jackets and fringed rings had pride of place. Nearby, New York-based, Peru-produced Sordo’s killer hollow polished bronze and silver showed why designers are turning to other metals to combat the ever-rising price of gold.

Now in its sixth season, NouvelleBox had a careful curation of brands featuring established names like Lito, who showed glamorous fringed earrings in celebration of 100 years of Art Deco, alongside her signature eye jewelry, hand-painted by miniature icon artists in Russia. Elsewhere, Castro Smith’s exquisite engraved rings told folk tales from around the world, while Aymer Maria’s gold and diamond jewels referenced Malian architecture.

The bright forms of Kinraden’s minimalist, sustainable jewelry shone out, as architect and designer Sarah Mullertz moves further into experimentation with mpingo blackwood, set into recycled gold and silver with as much care as sharply faceted gems. The brand’s perfectly balanced jewels unite consideration for both form and function, with a deep commitment to responsiblity.

Nearby, British goldsmith and NouvelleBox newcomer Jasmine Ataullah looked to Mughal architecture for her intricately carved gold and gemstone jewels. Luminous 27, also showing at Paris Fashion Week for the first time presented voluminous gemstone rings luxuriously lined with gold, and oversized bead necklaces in combinations like chalcedony and amber.

Down in the Marais, Goldrush presented an eclectic line-up featuring the refinement of Patrick Boghossian alongside Talkative’s Japanese sensuality; the diversity of Rachel Saidini’s carved gold and gemstone rings and Clara Chehab’s colorful work with rough and polished stones. A highlight, was Dermot Fowler, winner of the Goldrush BRANDNEW award, an incubator program for young design talent, who showed an accomplished 17-piece narrative collection based around the Pilgrim’s Progress, of chunky gems and oxidized silver.

Independent luxury jewelry at Paris Fashion Week

US designer Brent Neale chose the fabled Hôtel Crillon to launch a beautifully thought-out new Zodiac collection, that is a far cry from the usual stamped medallions. Each sign finds expression in solid gold and diamond pave platinum, in carefully designed rings, earrings and necklaces.

In a rooftop suite at the Hôtel Voltaire, Bibi van der Velden was ringing in her 20th year in business, with her first collection exclusively using white diamonds. The Diamond Collection puts her stamp on the most timeless of stones, while honoring the “strength and grace” of her signature motif; the alligator.

A few streets away, in a suite overlooking the Palais Royale, buyers could explore Jacquie Aiche’s whole collection, complete with hard stone slice rings featuring god and diamond thunderbirds, a highly collectable series of baguette gemstone stacking rings and a magnificent pair of faceted crysoprase drop earrings. Meanwhile, at Shihara, the minimalist Japanese jewelry designer Yuta Ishihara showed gold wire cube earrings augmented with micro-pave diamonds, alongside ingenious pearl earrings based on light fittings by Michael Anastassiades. At sister brand Yutai, antique gemstone rings has been taken apart and reset on minimalist cigar bands.

On the Left Bank, Marie Lichtenberg had laid out her jewels in her smart new HQ, as she prepares to elevate her exquisitely crafted collections by leaning further into 18kt gold. Precious ebony, gemstone mesh bracelets and a matte gold star chain gave a hint of what was to come. Meanwhile, in the private salons of the Bon Marché department store, Selim Mouzannar showed a handmade tubular diamond chain that will give direct-metal printing a run for its money. Over near the Champs-Elysées, Yvonne Leon presented new pieces including mixed metal linked stacking rings that pair diamond pave with brushed and polished metals, sure to be a hit at her new point of sale in Liberty London.

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