It stands to reason that when it comes to this season’s couture high jewellery, many of the pieces have glorious flights of fancy at their core. After all, it can take two or three years to complete a collection, meaning the latest confections can trace their origins to the start of the global lockdown, when travel became impossible.
Cue astounding masterpieces crafted as imaginative tributes to far-flung spectacles, from prehistoric landscapes and the oceanic depths to magnificent gardens and mountain rivers. Historic maisons including Piaget, Boucheron, Dior and Gucci have pulled out all the stops this season to craft truly astounding and innovative pieces. Here is everything you need to know about this summer’s dazzling haute joaillerie collections.
Couture High Jewellery
Piaget
For its glamourous new couture high jewellery collection, Metaphoria, Piaget’s creative director Stéphanie Sivrière has conjured a bejewelled romp through dramatic landscapes such as snow-capped peaks, exotic forests and sun-baked sands. Rather than interpreting each habitat literally, her pieces are a triumph of abstract styling, with ornamental stones like turquoise, rutilated quartz and tiger’s eye juxtaposed with gemstones and diamonds, set amongst exquisitely textured precious metal – a particular speciality of the house. The main highlight is the Foliatura set, with verdant emeralds, polished chrysoprase and greenish aquamarines standing in for lush plant life, framed in white gold adorned with the maison’s signature palais décor motif.
Piaget
White gold, Colombian emerald,
chrysoprase & diamond ring
POA
Tasaki
With Nature Spectacle, the Japanese house of Tasaki takes us on a whirlwind trip around the waters of the world – the source of its signature pearls. The bijou but perfectly formed collection is comprised of six stunning suites dedicated to everything from the way sunlight flickers on the surface of a crystalline lagoon, to the cascading torrents of a waterfall and the swirling eddies of the vast ocean. With strands of white South Sea and Akoya pearls strung from a collar of vivid yellow tourmalines, blue zircons and inky South Sea pearls, the eye-catching Ocean Light necklace aims to capture the mystical forces at play during a tidal full moon.
Tasaki
The Ocean Light Pearl necklace
POA
Tiffany
“In Jean Schlumberger’s imagination… the sea represented an unknown, infinite world. He choreographed unparalleled manifestations of its majesty and mystery,” says Nathalie Verdeille, Tiffany & Co’s new chief artistic officer of jewellery and high jewellery, on the house’s trailblazing designer from the 1950s and 60s. “My first Blue Book collection for the house is a deep dive into aquatic life that both honours and reimagines Schlumberger’s vision.” Her spirited and sparkling interpretation of Schlumberger’s beloved sea creatures – starfish, urchins and nebulous jellyfish – feels resolutely contemporary in its expression, whilst remaining true to his naturalistic design codes.
Tiffany & Co.
Blue Book bracelet in platinum,
black opal & diamonds
POA
Boucheron
The exception to the rule this season came courtesy of the storied house of Boucheron, where creative director Claire Choisne presented a collection of jewels which elevated the everyday objects that surrounded her during the 2020 lockdown. Glittering gold and gemstone hoodie strings (removable, of course), gleaming Rubik’s cube collars, sculptural rings filled with yellow diamonds like a Magic 8 ball and diamond-studded hair scrunchies delighted onlookers with their playful spirit and capricious use of gems, unexpected metals (like magnesium) and colourful enamel.
Boucheron
Solve Me necklace in grey spinels, diamonds, sapphires, mother of pearl, aluminium & white gold
POA
Louis Vuitton
The concept at Louis Vuitton this season? A dream-like journey to visit the shifting tectonic plates and erupting volcanoes at the very beginning of the earth’s formation. Creative director of jewellery Francesca Amfitheatrof’s rendition of the theme, Deep Time, is a stunning feat of ingenuity. Through the fusing of geometric layers of white and yellow gold with precious stones and diamonds – themselves prehistoric relics – the pieces manage to evoke all the drama and movement of these seismic events, while still feeling as supple and fluid to wear as a couture gown.
Louis Vuitton
Diamond & sapphire
Fossils necklace
POA
Chaumet
Les Jardins de Chaumet is just that – a whimsical tour of a meadow, orchard, hothouse and woodland where gem-studded botanics bloom. Many of the pieces, such as the Blé chapter, have their roots in iconic emblems of the maison – the wheatsheaf, for example, has been a signature motif since the Empresses Joséphine and Marie-Louise commissioned wheat ear tiaras from Chaumet over two centuries ago. Elsewhere, figurative sprigs of mistletoe, grape vines and ferns have been lovingly recreated with pearls, spinels and sparkling diamonds that would turn even the goddess Demeter green with envy.
Chaumet
Transformable necklace in platinum
& yellow gold, set with diamonds
POA
Gucci
Gucci has imagined a complete tour of the seasons for its latest couture high jewellery offering, Allegoria. As with previous haute joaillerie collections from the Florentine fashion house, traditional rules have been swept aside in favour of polychromatic gemstones of astonishing size and variety, combined in surprising ways for spectacular results. The frosty hues of Ethiopian opals are used to craft the wintery parures, while russet-coloured garnets and diamonds make the autumnal sets shine. Summer comes via intensely blue Paraiba tourmalines and spinels, with shimmering pastel tourmalines and sapphires delineating the spring sets. These are pieces destined to surprise and delight even the most discerning of contemporary jewellery fans.
Gucci
Fancy coloured sapphire
& diamond earrings
POA
Dior
The manicured gardens of Christian Dior’s beloved homes in Granville and Montauroux provided the couturier with lifelong inspiration and, decades on from his death, still have a potent influence over his eponymous maison. This season, Dior’s 170 piece-strong high jewellery collection, Couture Gardens, is an entrancing ode to his sacred flowers. Overlapping layers of open-worked metal are wreathed together like delicate lace, punctuated with an assortment of bright gemstones like buds planted in asymmetric rows – think abundant sprays of ruby roses, chains of sapphire and diamond daisies and bouquets of pearls that all appear freshly picked and fringed with dewy lacquered leaves.
