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Boucheron Is Making High Jewelry for All Genders

Photo credit: Boucheron
Photo credit: Boucheron

From Town & Country

During a time when everyone is feeling confined, Boucheron’s striking new high jewelry is liberating. This week in Paris, the French house presented a gender-fluid collection which celebrates the radical post-World War I spirit that gave rise to the streamlined Art Deco design movement.

Photo credit: Boucheron
Photo credit: Boucheron

The house’s creative director, Claire Choisne, explored the duality of gender expressed in the Roaring Twenties when women asserted their femininity by wearing masculine clothing, plunging necklines and short hair. “Art Deco style is personally my favorite,” Choisne tells T&C on a Zoom call from her Paris apartment. “It’s all about the purity of lines, the contrast of black and white enhanced by a touch of color and opulence.”

Jewelry designed to deliver freedom of style

The new 21-piece History of Style: Art Deco collection has another liberating quality: the jewelry is brilliantly transformable. Necklaces can be adapted into matching bracelets or belts, and pendants can be removed and worn as brooches or hair pins.

“The pieces give men and women the freedom to wear jewelry any way they want,” says Choisne, who is known for pushing the boundaries of what’s technically achievable. “High jewelry is about style and this lets the wearer convey their style.”

Photo credit: Boucheron
Photo credit: Boucheron

The Art Deco high jewelry follows Choisne’s innovative Contemplation collection unveiled last fall, which explored designs in featherweight—and unexpected—materials. It was technical accomplishment reminiscent of the pioneering spirit of Frédéric Boucheron, who established the house in 1858. Choisne imbued a sense of emotion and an ethereal quality in metal and stones in pieces that echoed the stars and the clouds in the sky, but were still entirely wearable and relevant.

For the Art Deco collection, Choisne delved into the house’s rich archives. Frédéric Boucheron was one of the most awarded and influential jewelers of his era, and his original designs continue to inform the house’s aesthetic. But the imaginative Choisne isn’t one to repeat the past. She seamlessly references the house’s signature motifs while imbuing her own contemporary style and novel ideas. Frederic Boucheron, for instance, pioneered the use rock crystal in high jewelry by employing the transparent material to imbue a sense of lightness in large designs. It’s also a favorite material of Choisne’s; the statement Chevalier ring featuring a 4.43-carat Muzo emerald is set in rock crystal carved in an octagonal motif resembling Place Vendôme with lines that give the illusion of baguette diamonds.

Photo credit: Boucheron
Photo credit: Boucheron

It's time men considered bold jewels.

Choisne’s interest in dressing men in high jewels was sparked last fall when she placed a simple diamond arrow earring on a man. “I loved the look of that arrow on a man,” she explains. “It felt natural and strong.” During the design process for this collection, she photoshopped the jewelry sketches on images of men and women, and said the large-scale, streamlined pieces worked just as well on both sexes. And the collection’s use of simple black and white with pops of colors, mainly emeralds, makes it more easily wearable for men.

“A century ago, it was natural for men to wear big jewelry,” she said. During the Art Deco period, Boucheron, along with several other French jewelry houses, created some of the most extravagant Indian jewels for the Maharajahs and their families. For example, the new Plastron Emerald strand, with more than 220 emerald beads, was inspired by a famous necklace Boucheron created for the Maharajah of Patiala in 1928 that was dripping with diamonds and emeralds. The new design is far more contemporary and can be transformed into two bracelets or a choker.

If Choisne has a say, we will be seeing more men in diamonds and jewels. “I’m seeing young Asian men, particularly in Korea, wearing big diamonds, and it looks totally cool and refreshing.”

Photo credit: Bucheron
Photo credit: Bucheron

Designs as soft and supple as a silk necktie

Photo credit: Boucheron
Photo credit: Boucheron

There is a soft flexibility in several of the large-scale pieces, a technique that Choisne has mastered in past collections. A long diamond Cravate with a removable 8.2-carat Zambian emerald pin surrounded by onyx and black lacquer geometric lines, is “as flexible as a silk necktie.” The supple Emerald Chevron necklace, which echoes a 1920s Boucheron pattern, has a 61-carat Zambian emerald drop and also softly drapes down the neck. And a long diamond necklace with chevron patterns can be worn as a belt, bracelets or headband.

Even the most feminine symbol, a large diamond bow tie, is outlined in black lacquer for a streamlined appearance. The simple bow made with baguette and round diamonds is worn four ways: as a ring, a brooch, a bow tie or pinned in the hair.

Art Deco design came at a time after World War I when people were ready to celebrate and enjoy life again. Choisne hopes that will be the same following the pandemic. “Everyone wants to finally be able to go out again, to go to parties and restaurants and to have fun,” she says. And, like in the past, jewelry has always been one of the best ways to sparkle and celebrate.

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