Ranging from colour and shape to beetles and plants, the season’s haute joaillerie collections prove that inspiration is all around us. Here, get a closer look at the sparkling new pieces from Hermès, Cartier and more.
Cartier has been teasing the third chapter of its Nature Sauvage high jewellery collection on its house ambassadors at high profile awards shows (most recently, Zoe Saldaña at the 97th Annual Academy Awards) and high fashion events (think Blackpink’s Jisoo at the inaugural Grand Dîner du Louvre). From the pieces that have been revealed, the latest chapter will continue with its inspiration from the natural world: panthers and bees among them. This piece, the Panthère Versatiles, worn by Saldaña at the Oscars, is exactly as its name implies: it can be transformed in a myriad of ways into a necklace, an open choker, a sautoir, or wrapped around the wrist as a bracelet.
Louis Vuitton’s Awakened Hands, Awakened Minds Chapter II collection continues its exploration of the tension between mechanisation and manual skill that Francesca Amfitheatrof, LV’s former artistic director for watches and jewellery, set out at its launch. This can be seen in its wonderfully intricate pieces: for example, the Phénoménal necklace taps on several of France’s most celebrated art forms, like latticework and porcelain-making, to create a spectacular necklace woven in yellow gold and diamonds, anchored by a signature LV Monogram Star-cut diamond and 7.44 carat Colombian emerald.
Light, colour and shapes were at the top of creative director of Hermès Jewellery Pierre Hardy’s mind when it came to his new high jewellery collection for the maison, Les Formes de la couleur. “This collection expresses colour in shapes. I wanted to find a way to express this fundamental phenomenon—of colour, at Hermès—and build a strong, autonomous and independent identity,” Hardy said. Here, the rigour of clean lines and geometric shapes are imagined as precious jewellery, and, for a twist, distorted with colourful stones—beryl, chrysoprase, tanzanite, rutilated quartz, tsavorite and more—for a striking effect that evokes the refraction and pixellation of light.
“Nature is the theme that inspires me, as [it did] Frédéric Boucheron who had a vision of a living, naturalistic and untamed nature,” says Boucheron’s creative director Claire Choisne. “From [his] first creations, he wanted to show it as something humble rather than a sophisticated beauty.” It’s fitting then, that the French jewellery maison’s latest Histoire de Style high jewellery collection, Untamed Nature, draws on the naturalist studies of its founder. Presenting a 28-piece strong showing the collection draws on unassuming flora and fauna, from plants such as lingonberry, oats, reeds and ivy, to insects like beetles, moths, and teeny tiny renditions of bees, ladybugs and even flies. “I wanted to capture it through his eyes, and to take it a step further with my own personal touch,” Choisne says. “In this collection, nature is so untamed that the sizes and portés of the pieces demonstrate its invasion on female and men’s bodies, reclaiming its rights over the individual.”
Christian Dior’s floral refuge in Milly-la-Forêt was the starting point for Dior Joaillerie’s Victoire de Castellane for its new high jewellery collection, titled Milly Dentelle. The eponymous founder’s love of flowers was well known and it is reflected in the high jewellery collection in a profusion of colourful floral sprays and luxuriant foliage drawn in diamonds, rubies, tourmalines and sapphires, fashioned into intricate lace-like designs undoubtedly inspired by its feminine roots in haute couture.
This story first appeared in the April 2025 issue of GRAZIA Singapore.
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