Tag high jewelry

Barbiecore refusniks take heart. While “Gen-Z Yellow” hasn’t caught on in the same way as its “Millennial Pink” counterpart, when it comes to diamonds, it’s a different story. During July’s High Jewelry Week in Paris, heritage houses doubled down on yellow diamonds.

Graff

Centerpiece of its Sunrise exhibition at Graff’s Paris flagship by Place Vendôme was a new high jewelry necklace centrepieced by a 30 carat fancy intense yellow pear shaped diamond surrounded by a further 138 carats in both yellow and white.

“The pavé makes the yellow look more intense,” said Graff Art Director Anne Eva Goffrey who described how the stone seems to be floating thanks to Graff’s hallmark setting technique where the metal joins are practically invisible.

Graff has long been synonymous with yellow diamonds. House founder Laurence Graff was one of the first to introduce the yellow diamond when everyone else was focused on the white, she said, adding that now, “more ladies choose yellow over white when it comes to engagement rings.”

Purpose of the exhibition is to show how many the different gradations of yellow there can be. “Normally when you think of yellow diamonds you only think about one color but wanted to show all the very different saturations we work with.”

While handcraftsmanship is and always will be paramount, she says, the house still pushes the limits when it comes to innovative technology. The studio uses 3D printing during the prototyping process to refine the volumes and articulations.

“It’s very useful because we gain time and it gives the workshop more precision but you need the balance. When you make jewelry by hand, it has a soul and the pieces talk with emotion. If you just

PARIS — Haute couture week here offered a glittering Parisian conclusion to a season of traveling jewelry showcases, with historic houses and independent names making a reveal or giving an encore of their latest designs.

And whether used to double down on established codes or carve out new ones, color continued to dominate the collections shown last week, particularly in diamonds.

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One would have been forgiven for forgetting that yellow ones are a rarity of nature given their profusion in collections shown in Paris, starting with Graff, where many gradations were on display in the “Sunrise” line showcased in its Saint-Honoré flagship.

“Now for engagement rings, you have more ladies choosing yellow [diamonds] instead of white,” revealed design director Anne-Eva Geffroy, reminding that Laurence Graff was among the first to collect them.

The star of the exhibition was the pear-shaped 30.28-carat fancy intense yellow centerpiece diamond, flanked by a further 167 carats of yellow and white diamonds on a never-seen-before necklace. But there were plenty more, including a necklace made of a cascade of yellow pear-shaped gems that morphed into a line of rail-set baguettes, and a row of golden brilliant-cut stones lined with a second row of white.

That contrast was also front and center at Messika, where founder Valérie Messika said that the sunny hue of yellow diamonds was reinforced by their pristine counterparts, and vice versa.

The five-set first part of the “Midnight Sun” collection marked her 10th anniversary in high jewelry, casting yellow diamonds as a symbol of the “brilliance of the sun in the middle of the night” — or rather the glamorous ’70s club scene.

Beyond the reveal of stunners that included the mirror-polish Ultimate Party collar featuring a 20-carat pear-cut yellow diamond and 9-carat cushion-cut diamond “made to shine but

After weeks of destination shows for press and hand-picked high jewelry clients, Haute Couture Fashion Week in Paris saw a shower of diamonds across Place Vendôme and some of the city’s most luxe hotel suites, with the latest fine and high jewelry offerings from the big jewelry houses. If real trends can be identified up in the rarified world of high jewelry, yellow diamonds was one of them, as Graff’s signature colored stone popped up also in the disco-inspired collection at Messika, Buccellati, and De Beers’s Metamorphosis collection. From Tasaki in the gardens of the Ritz, to Chaumet’s celebration of nature via Gemfields’ designer showcase; houses explored the gifts of the natural world. Boucheron however, took a different tack, presenting one of the most original collections of the season, that saw Creative Director Claire Choisne at her audacious best.

Chaumet

With the Jardin de Chaumet collection, the Paris heritage house went back to its design roots, as Nature’s jeweler par excellence for over two centuries. Celebrating the bounty of the harvest, the wheat motif famously seen in the 1811 Wheat Ear Tiara tiara becomes a delicately rendered necklace with a contemporary touch in the form of a geometric diamond pendant, while the ruby and diamonds Feuilles de Vigne earrings graze the shoulders. Elsewhere, yellow diamond pansies, vibrant ruby tulips, and opal tree bark gleam amongst winking white diamonds.

Boucheron

Creative Director Claire Choisne

How do many lab-grown diamond fine and high jewelry companies that claim to be environmentally sustainable provide evidence to back such claims for their designs?

New York-based Grown Brilliance does all of the above, and more. Embodying a new wave of beautifully designed and evidence-based sustainable lab-grown diamond jewelry, this brand produces six stylistically diverse collections a year. While these are classics with an artistic twist, they are also of notably high quality: 95% of Grown Brilliance diamonds are I+ in color, and VS2 or higher in clarity. Led by founder and Creative Director Akshie Jhaveri, the brand’s supply chain, including packaging, is carbon-neutral, thanks to offsets purchased from the United Nations carbon off-set platform. In a transparent move, Jhaveri supplied this writer with sustainable bona fides including proof-of-sustainability certificates for her brand’s diamond growing, cutting, polishing and jewelry manufacturing facilities. As of this writing, Grown Brilliance is being audited by the sustainable industry standard organization SCS Global Services. The goal is to obtain SCS certification as a carbon-neutral or climate-neutral jewelry business.

Equally of note, Grown Brilliance is pioneering the e-tailing of sustainable lab-grown diamond jewelry by enabling customers to have their custom designs rapidly created with artistry and technical precision — at prices that compare exceedingly well to those of their competition As Jhaveri explained, “Our website’s Truly Custom tool allows people to design their unique lab-grown diamond ring, which we produce within 14 days, all without charging for this bespoke service.” (Grown Brilliance also offers Truly Custom necklace, earring and bracelet design options.) Too discreet to mention

Piaget occupies a rare niche in the luxury world. It specializes in micro-thin mechanical watchmaking on the one hand, and high jewelry watches on the other, which are often introduced as part of high jewelry collections. It’s easy to imagine Piaget’s gem buyers out there competing with teams from Bulgari (which shares both specialties), to scoop up the world’s top gems. While both are masters of gem-setting and micro-horology, Piaget places a special emphasis on mixing gems with metiers, particularly inlay and marquetry using ornamental stones and exotic materials. The Metaphoria collection—inspired by nature’s metamorphoses—is 52 pieces strong, including 41 jewelry creations and 11 watches, most of which are one-of-a-kind.

Piaget says the goal of this collection was to emphasize details of natural phenomena, such as the flow of a waterfall, the colors of the forest, or the rays of the sun, all within the house’s signature style, which is festive, elegant, and unique. It accomplished the goal using ingredients from nature itself: coral, turquoise (which in high-quality grades is shaping up to be a favorite gem in high jewelry collections this year), lapis lazuli, petrified wood, and even elytra (beetle’s wings) along with diamonds and precious metals.

The collection is divided into subsets of pieces meant to be worn together, with high-jewelry watches sprinkled into the mix. The leaf-themed Alata set includes a cuff watch, with leaf-shaped pieces of hand-engraved yellow gold that are given Piaget’s special “decor palace” finish – a kind of organic version of guilloché that resembles tree bark. Yellow gold leaves are folded together over the cuff in layers with mother-of-pearl marquetry and white gold pieces set with round and marquis-shaped diamonds. Matching pieces include a necklace, ring, and a spectacular

Tiffany & Co. dove deep into the archives for its latest Blue Book collection.

The new Out of the Blue line pays homage to the late, great Jean Schlumberger and his legendary oceanic creations. The French designer, who began working with the house back in the ‘50s, translated his passion for the underwater world into wildly imaginative pieces. The new high jewelry reimagines Schlumberger’s enigmatic symbols of the sea with truly exquisite gems.

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Out of the Blue is the first Blue Book collection to be designed by Tiffany’s chief artistic officer of jewelry and high jewelry Nathalie Verdeill, who left Cartier to join the American brand last year. It is also the first fully realized one to be released since LVMH acquired the house. The collection will debut in two phases over the course of the year, with the summer line exploring seven distinct themes: Shell, Coral, Jellyfish, Pisces, Starfish, Sea Star, and Star Urchin.

“In Jean Schlumberger’s imagination and design philosophy, the sea represented an unknown, infinite world,” Verdeille said in a statement. “He choreographed unparalleled manifestations of its majesty and mystery.”

With geometric and stylized aesthetics, the pieces nod to the respective themes without being too on the nose. The Shell designs were inspired by the way in which objects are sculpted underwater and may even have treasures hidden within. One transformable pendant, for instance, features a detachable diamond brooch with a stunning black opal of over 21 carats inside.

The Coral pieces reflect the vibrancy of their namesake with tanzanites, sapphires, and yellow diamonds, while the Jellyfish bling takes cues from the ethereal creature with luminescent details. The jellyfish brooch with gem-encrusted tentacles is particularly striking.

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The Pisces creations are characterized