Paris: High-end jewelry remains effervescent despite luxury downturn

Fashion Network

4 days ago

Paris was packed this month with scores of haute joaillerie collections, from established giants to jewelry by leading fashion labels to emerging stars – in a season dominated by Art Deco and nature motifs. FashionNetwork.com caught up with five: Chanel, Dior, David Yurman, Serendipity and Sahag Arslanian.
Timed to coincide with the French capital's haute couture season, thus guaranteeing the presence of VICs, top editors and jewelry influencers, the jewelry season now boasts as many presentations as there are actual runway shows.
The nerve center remains Place Vendôme, the world's leading top- jewelry retailing plaza with flagship stores by the likes of Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Chaumet, Boucheron, Fred and Jar, as well as stores from leading fashion and luxury houses – Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton.
Chronologically, Chanel opened the season with a display above its lush Vendôme flagship, where it showed the final collection by the late and great designer Patrice Leguéreau. Entitled "Reach For the Stars", the collection played on three key elements central to Mademoiselle Chanel, The Comet, The Wings and The Lion, Coco's fetish animal.
Standouts included a beautiful Wings of Chanel necklace centered by a 19.55 carats sapphire, whose dropped center can be dis-attached and worn as bracelet. Priced at €11 million, it echoes Chanel's time in Hollywood, when producer Samuel Goldwyn invited her to dress stars, and Coco responded with a style that emphasized levity.
Leguéreau, who passed in November last year after a decade at the house, also added the first-ever Chanel choker; a beautiful tiara late-30s style, thus made to be worn on forehead and not on top of the head. In an innovative move, the Lion series featured a mane made out of moonstone, and an abstract big cat composed of a series of yellow diamonds.
Chez Dior, one had the pleasure of discovering the latest ideas from Victoire de Castellane, the house's jewelry designer for the past quarter century.
Victoire played on three themes close to the house's DNA: enchanting landscapes, delicate bouquets and fairytale balls. Apt, as Monsieur Dior's first steps in fashion were creating for the costume balls so beloved of the French in the 1930s.
Blending volumes and superimpositions between gems with unique skill – sculpted on hard stone backgrounds hemmed with diamonds, such as fine deer or rabbits emerging on fine diamond fields on some watch facades.
Above all, everything felt very, very Dior, in a collection entitled "Diorexquis". Thanks to De Castellane's remarkable ability to have invented a very specific visual identity, combining sophistication, joie de vivre and Monsieur's deep love of the garden.
Key pieces trumpeted all the virtuosity of the ateliers, embodied, in particular, by the 'doublet d'opale' technique, which consists of mounting a layer of opal on another stone - onyx or mother-of-pearl - to compose striking cameos, recalling the complex nuances of the sky or water.
While the 'plique-à-jour' process pushes the boundaries of excellence, peppering the bouquets with a thousand sparkling colors, thanks to the use of lacquer - a signature of Dior Joaillerie. Creating what seems like a miniature stained-glass window through on light gentle falls.
America's contribution to the season came from David Yurman, whose display inside a Faubourg St Honoré showroom included lots of mini hot peppers and crosses pendants composed of emeralds. Though the highlight was a graphic modernist Art Deco cuff bracelet made in a zig zag lattice white diamonds and white gold, priced at $295,000.
Founded in New York in 1980 by sculptor David Yurman, and his wife Sybil, a painter and ceramist, the house is best known for its haute artisanal and exceptional craftsmanship.
Other Art Deco elements included Deco Emerald drop earrings priced at $850,000, or classily elegant Stax three row rings in yellow gold and diamonds that cost $35,000.
Today, headed up by their son Evan, David Yurman collections are available online, in 51 boutiques across the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and France, and in over authorized fine jewelry retailers.
Nature, always a key theme in jewelry, inspired a beautiful new range from Serendipity by Christine Chen. Playing on the idea of the "Secret Garden", Chen showed an evocative necklace where diamonds were almost woven like lace and paired with tanzanite recalling the lilies of Monet. Along with a series of delicate petal-shaped earrings in multi-colored sapphires, mounted on light-weight titanium, recalling the artist's garden at Giverny on a bright spring day.
Chen's great skill is to blend east with west harmoniously, like in her designs inspired by the ginkgo, the long-lived dioecious tree known for producing very healthy supplements. Seen in her superb Gingko Dream series – such as a necklace with a golden leaves, engraved like a ginkgo, and completed with Colombian emeralds. Or an opal and golden pearl necklace, about which Chen liked to mention the ancient Chinese proverb: 'Springtime flowers are transformed into the fruits of autumn.'
Presented inside a wing of the Musée Guimet, Paris' main museum of Asian art, the collection was entitled "Jardin du Reve" and was shown on dancers dressed like woodland spirts.
'I'd like Serendipity to be a bridge, beyond culture, connecting emotions and creating beautiful and rare encounters between people,' explained the very elegant Chen.
One brand new name that also caught attention was Sahag Arslanian, from a third-generation family of diamond experts, with over 70 years of legacy rooted in Antwerp. And often billed as one of the top 10 diamond trading companies worldwide. The founder's grandson Sahag Arslanian officially launched his own first high jewellery collection in the Automobile Club de France.
The jewelry was all about hyper flexibility with necklaces that sat ideally on collar bones.
'We've sourced diamonds from Russia to A to Z and all the way to Angola,' explained Sahag, who insisted that 'conflict diamonds are over, and everything we use today are RJC-certified. We were one of first people to do that.'
Based on three key motifs - sphere, kite and zig zag - his radiant Grand Eclipse necklace is priced at $700,000. While a Sun Rays necklace in angular yellow and white gold with a central pear-cut stone costs €250,000.
This 35-year-old Mandarin speaking alumni of Le Rosey, the world's most expensive boarding school, does not lack self-confidence.
'I believe our creations will maintain their price at auctions. Our concept is based on the duality between white and yellow gold. Our creations are made to be worn, not kept in a safe. Worn while you are not being sled conscious about the prize,' insisted Sahag.