The Best Diamond Jewellery From Paris Couture Week 2023
While not all major houses showed at Paris Couture Week 2023, there were still plenty of stunning jewels on display. Queen Elizabeth II, shooting stars, the natural world, couture clothing, and Japan are just a few of the places designers looked to when creating their magnificent jewellery collections. It’s always inspiring to see how they translate these concepts into jewellery. Lace and couture traditions create featherlight pieces with natural diamonds that appear to be floating in midair. Animals and nature get either extremely lifelike or abstract treatments, creating pieces that honor the world around us through diamonds and gems. Read on to discover the most stunning diamond high jewellery straight from Paris.
Boucheron
Boucheron’s gorgeous Histoire de Style collections trace iconic jewellery moments and movements throughout history, expertly re-envisioned through the brilliant mind of its Creative Director, Claire Choisne. This collection, Like a Queen, was inspired by a Boucheron brooch that Queen Elizabeth, then just a princess, received on her 18th birthday. The Art Deco brooch featured a geometric design of diamond and aquamarine that Her Majesty wore many times throughout her long reign. The Like a Queen collection honors the timeless design of this brooch, expanding into 18 different suites, many transformable into several different pieces of jewellery.
The Moon White set is a highlight of the collection. The necklace is crafted from white gold, diamonds, and 175 Akoya pearls and can be worn in three different ways. The necklace features a clasp with two Art Deco designs connected by several strands of the finest Akoya pearls. The clasp can be removed and worn as a pair of brooches or as a hair ornament. It is accompanied by pendant earrings that echo the Art Deco motif on the necklace and two matching rings with glittering natural diamonds and shimmering mother-of-pearl.
Chopard
Instead of debuting a new high jewellery collection, Chopard opted to showcase sensational new diamonds and gemstones the Swiss house has acquired. Each stunning stone will be the centerpiece of a new high jewellery creation that was specifically designed to highlight its beauty and rarity. This unique approach highlights the dedication of Chopard’s Co-President and Artistic Director, Caroline Scheufele, to hunting down exquisite stones from around the world.
Chopard revealed two sets of diamonds, three natural green diamonds from Brazil and three natural pink diamonds from South Africa. Green and pink are two of the rarest diamond colors that exist, and it’s very rare to find them in very large carat sizes. The largest in this suite is a 4.63-carat green diamond. While 4.63 carats might not seem massive for a diamond, it’s huge for a fancy-colored green diamond. (To put that in perspective, a ring featuring a 5.06-carat fancy vivid green diamond surrounded by pink diamonds sold at Christie’s for $16.8 million.) These diamonds will be set into contemporary, mismatched earrings and a Toi et Moi ring.
De Beers
De Beers debuted Prelude, the first chapter in its Metamorphosis high jewellery collection. Metamorphosis celebrates the ephemeral beauty of the changing seasons using white, brown, and fancy-colored diamonds set in different colors of gold. Céline Assimon, CEO of De Beers Jewellers, said, “in Metamorphosis by De Beers, we have transformed the spontaneous beauty of nature into our most complex and innovative designs yet.” The collection uses different setting techniques to bring out the beauty of natural diamonds, and several pieces are transformable.
The Prelude hoop earrings feature white, rose, and yellow gold with white, brown, and yellow diamonds. De Beers’ artisans mixed different geometric motifs, including pavé diamonds, triangles of rose gold inset with round diamonds, spirals of yellow gold, and a polished band of white gold studded with bezel-set diamonds encircles the riot of colors and textures within.
Cindy Chao
The White Label Dragonfly Brooch is a perfect example of the artistry and craftsmanship that earned her the prestigious Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres distinction from the French government. Chao created a jewel-encrusted dragonfly that looks as light as a feather, thanks to nearly invisible settings for the diamonds, which seem to be suspended in midair.
Chao used onyx horn for the body of the dragonfly, topping it with a large pear-shaped diamond as the insect’s head. The wings are crafted from more than 500 diamonds in different shapes and colors. Ombré pavé diamonds ranging from deep yellow to white cover the veins in the glittering wings. Oval, pear, and rose-cut diamonds are suspended from these in an impossibly delicate metal frame. The yellow and white diamonds are complemented by pink sapphires, purple garnets, and two large blue sapphires.
Gucci
Gucci continues its exploration of a fanciful, decadent garden in the newest releases from the Hortus Deliciarum high jewellery collection. Flora and fauna come to life in opulent pieces with whimsical designs that are inherently Gucci.
This breathtaking necklace is inspired by glittering shooting stars and powerful waterfalls. It took artisans more than 300 hours to create. The necklace combines several motifs familiar to Gucci connoisseurs, including bows. The central part of the necklace features a significant pear-cut diamond set within a bow and a shooting star arc above it. Below this, there’s a chandelier effect featuring pear and marquise cut diamonds. The necklace collar echoes shooting stars. There are 11 stars inside the necklace, and diamond strands of different lengths evoke the tail of shooting stars and meteors. The necklace closes with a lifelike diamond bow, and it has matching chandelier earrings, too.
Dior
Fittingly for Couture week, Dior looks to its haute couture for inspiration in the Dearest Dior collection. The pieces are inspired by lace, which is still as light as air despite being rendered in precious metals and covered in sparkling natural diamonds. Dior Joaillerie’s Artistic Director Victoire de Castellane and her team created new jewellery techniques, including mesh sheets crafted from gold, to create these pieces and to have them sit as comfortably as lace would on the body.
The Dearest Dior bracelet uses a combination of rose gold and white diamonds to emphasize the lace inspiration, as well as the lightness of the designs. At the center of the bracelet is a gorgeous cushion cut diamond. It sits atop a golden filigree motif studded with diamonds. These are encircled by two rows of diamonds: one row of round brilliant diamonds flanked by off-set marquise cut diamonds, which gives a wreath effect to the piece. Ornate goldwork curves around the sides of the wrist, leading to a diamond-set bangle. There is a matching necklace, ring, and earrings, too.
Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton released a tightly edited collection in the final chapter of its Spirit collection, the fourth from Francesca Amfitheatrof, Artistic Director for Watches and Jewellery. Each piece honors the prestigious maison’s heritage, transforming iconic design elements, sometimes humble ones from trunk making, into bejeweled masterpieces. Within the Spirit collection, there are four themes, including Liberty.
Liberty is an important ethos at Louis Vuitton, which is fitting due to the house’s background as a trunk-making company. Its artisans have crafted bespoke trunks for over a century that provided its clientele with the freedom to explore, travel, and see the world — all in perfect style, of course. Amfitheatrof pays homage to the beginnings of the maison with a diamond-encrusted pendant necklace shaped like a trunk. The trunk actually opens, revealing a sapphire hidden within.
Chanel
Rather than releasing a new high jewellery collection, Chanel chose to draw our attention to its high-horology watches, which are embellished with techniques inspired by haute couture and high jewellery. Chanel is one of the only maisons that has mastered all three métiers, these watch dials are the perfect way to showcase these artistic crafts. The shape of the watch case is inspired by the dome-shaped pincushions that founder Gabrielle Chanel wore around her wrist, which was attached by a grosgrain ribbon.
The Mademoiselle Privé Pique-Aiguilles Embroidery Motif has a full diamond pavé dial inspired by black fabric embroidered with silver sequins. The design also recalls the appearance of dozens of pins poked into a black cushion. The white-gold dial is coated in black, then gem setters use the snow setting technique to fully cover it in diamonds (611 diamonds, to be precise). The snow-setting technique features diamonds of many different sizes set in a seemingly random pattern, like freshly fallen snow. The sides of the 18K yellow gold case are also set with diamonds. The watch is finished with a black grosgrain ribbon with a diamond-set buckle in honor of Gabrielle Chanel’s pincushion bracelet.
Cartier
Cartier’s globetrotting collection Beautés du Monde, “beauty of the world” in English, celebrates places, creatures, and traditions that are known for their rare, enduring loveliness. The third chapter debuted this week, highlighting peacock and bird feathers, fish scales, and the artistry of Japanese culture and fabrics.
The Obi necklace is a magnificent ode to Japanese fabrics embellished with a design of a rising sun. It features Zambian emeralds at the center of each sun, and onyx insets, rubies, and brilliant rays of natural diamonds fan from the cabochon-cut gemstones. Green, red, and black are a classic Cartier color combination, always offset with white natural diamonds. The dangling pendant on the necklace is removable and can be worn as a brooch.
Repossi
Repossi unveiled its first high-jewellery collection since 2020, and it was well worth the wait. La Ligne, which means “the line” in English, explores the contrasts between sharp lines and pear-shaped diamonds. This tightly focused and restrained aesthetic rendered solely in white gold and diamonds allows Repossi to showcase its unique designs and inventive settings. La Ligne takes inspiration from architecture, modern art, and the maison’s archives. In the collection, massive pear-shaped diamonds seem to float above the geometric, diamond-set lines of the pieces. La Ligne includes several necklaces with similar designs but varying lengths, asymmetric cuffs, bold rings, and dramatic earrings.
The highlight of the collection is undoubtedly the La Ligne necklace. This asymmetrical collar is set with 398 diamonds, which cover multiple sides of the “line” that snakes around the neck, ensuring it sparkles from all angles. One side of the necklace is longer, and it’s tipped with a 2.84-carat pear-shaped diamond that appears to hover at the end of the necklace. In classic Repossi fashion, the pear-shaped diamond isn’t set directly above the line but is offset toward the center of the piece.
