the Year of the Horse<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut for Into the Horsescape, Herm\u00e8s\u2019s ninth collection of haute bijouterie and largest to date, Pierre Hardy, the house\u2019s creative director of fine jewelry, said he wanted to suggest equine attributes in different ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cStones and metal are very hard, almost hostile materials, so I wanted to make them as soft and sensual as possible,\u201d Mr. Hardy said in an interview.<\/p>\n
A 90-piece collection, featuring several pieces that Herm\u00e8s called masterpiece jewels, centered on rose gold, diamonds, and warm-hued materials such as pale coral, pink opal, agate, tiger\u2019s-eye and black jade.<\/p>\n
Most of the collection\u2019s jewels clearly were inspired by modern riding tack, with details lifted from bridles and reins, saddles, stirrups and whips. The horse bit appeared as chokers and rings in rose gold with diamonds. A striking cuff bracelet in a gradient pav\u00e9 of blue-gray spinels was set with a 156.71-carat orange moonstone.<\/p>\n
An 18th-century harness piece in the shape of a saddle, from the Herm\u00e8s museum, was recreated as an ornate gold cuff bracelet with a seat made of satin-finish titanium coated with black ceramic, ornaments in chiseled yellow gold and trim in white diamonds.<\/p>\n
The camail, a protective chain mail hood worn in medieval times by knights and horses alike, inspired sculptural body jewels. A plastron necklace in a supple mesh of rose gold and diamonds featured a 9.55-carat orange-brown diamond drop. A halter-like piece with a latticed yoke and a wraparound belt was fully set with diamonds. Gemstones worked in delicate gradients enhanced a sense of fluidity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little experimental in that jewelry can suggest clothes in the same way that bustiers or jackets can almost be jewels,\u201d Mr. Hardy said. \u201cThe difference is that trends pass; the desire for a jewel doesn\u2019t. That\u2019s what interests me.\u201d<\/p>\n
A.I. Meets Craft<\/p>\n
Claire Choisne, the creative director at Boucheron, is celebrating her 15th anniversary at the house by exhibiting her latest Carte Blanche high jewelry collection, along with some archival pieces, at Christie\u2019s New York in October.<\/p>\n
Ms. Choisne said when she began thinking about the collection in 2022, A.I. was emerging as a constant topic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was scared at first, and that\u2019s the genesis of this collection,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cI love technology and innovation, but its amplitude and speed affected me more than usual.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s precious is us,\u201d Ms. Choisne continued. \u201cWe are all alike, yet every one of us is unique. So, my starting point became: How do you do that through jewelry?\u201d<\/p>\n
Called Human Being, the latest collection bridges two extremes: uniformity (A.I. was asked what a high jewelry necklace looks like. Its answer: \u201cClusters.\u201d) and the unmistakably handmade.<\/p>\n
Five parures, each with the same bib necklace and ring designs, used gemstones such as clear rock crystal, peach-toned Brazilian morganite and onyx.<\/p>\n
The Flower necklace, in rose gold and more than 1,547 carats of matte-finish rose quartz set with a 3.26-carat cushion-cut diamond and with diamond pav\u00e9, was decorated with a floral motif by Alexandra Carle, a micropainter in the Haute Savoie region of France.<\/p>\n
Another necklace, in white gold and 580 carats of smoky quartz with a 1.74-carat triangular diamond and pav\u00e9, was inspired by archival images of Victorian tattoos, Ms. Choisne said. Its motifs were hand-etched by Joseph Bongrand, a glyptitian and sculptor in Paris.<\/p>\n
Ms. Choisne described the collection as an anti-A.I. manifesto.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy point was to prove that true innovation lives in gestures and know-how. That\u2019s what makes a jewel unique.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of Gods and Gems<\/p>\n
Van Cleef & Arpels mined symbols of ancient civilization for Fascinating Egypt, a collection of 116 jewels that was previewed in early June in Paris with plans to expand to 180 creations by fall 2027.<\/p>\n
The land of the pharaohs is familiar terrain. When Tutankhamen\u2019s tomb was found in 1922, the then-fledgling house rode a swell of Egyptomania with jewels inspired by its treasures. One piece from 1924, for example, was a fully articulated panorama bracelet portraying the stylized figures of two Egyptian figures kneeling at a game table, their forms created in onyx, rubies and emeralds against a diamond background.<\/p>\n
The latest descendants of that bracelet, such as the Paysage Merveilleux in blue sapphires and black spinels, were made using the house\u2019s signature serti mysterieux, or mystery set, an openwork gem-setting technique that creates the illusion of gemstones sitting side by side with no visible prongs.<\/p>\n
To achieve a collection high on color and contrast, the studio studied expressions of Egyptian art from Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Champollion\u2019s work with hieroglyphs in the 19th century through the Memphis movement, said Catherine R\u00e9nier, the president and chief executive of the Richemont-owned jewelry house, in a video interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a real focus on innovative color expressions,\u201d she said. \u201cOrnamental stones let us do interesting things with color and shape, with the taut lines and geometry that is specific to Egypt, but seen through a contemporary lens.\u201d All pieces are stamped with hieroglyph cartouches spelling the house\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
The scarab resurfaced in chrysoprase and a nearly 4-carat triangle-cut green tourmaline on the \u00c9lan de Vie pendant necklace, a layered openwork style in white and yellow gold with emeralds, diamonds, sugilite and bands of turquoise, lapis lazuli and chrysoprase. Throughout, bold jewels mixed hardstone marquetry with gemstones.<\/p>\n
Creations for 20th-century royalty found fresh iterations, too. The Princesse du Nil necklace, in diamonds, white natural pearls and 107.37 carats of Columbian emerald drops, reinterpreted a collaret made in 1929 for Princess Faiza of Egypt. Designs associated with Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, inspired important and transformable jewels, among them a trio of Zip necklaces with palmettes or ribbon chokers, one in white- and gold-tone mother-of-pearl and diamonds.<\/p>\n
\u201cOrnamental stones create room to play,\u201d Ms. R\u00e9nier said. \u201cThe polychromy in this collection is very different from what we have done in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fashion week, it seems, is always happening somewhere. Now, it is starting to feel that way with jewelry,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12919],"tags":[27052,35036,35033,35034,32868,35032,4953,21510,26166,8416,19101,35035,11642,22340],"class_list":["post-54902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hermes","tag-boucheron","tag-catherine","tag-choisne","tag-claire","tag-couture-fashion-week","tag-hardy","tag-hermes","tag-hermes-international-sa","tag-jewels-and-jewelry","tag-luxury-goods-and-services","tag-pierre","tag-renier","tag-van-cleef-arpels","tag-your-feed-fashion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}