One of the highlights of the jewellery year is seeing what surprise Claire Choisne, Creative Director at Boucheron, has dreamt up. The January collection, under the Histoire de Style label is based on the house’s design heritage, carefully preserved in its extensive archives.
This year, Claire Choisne shoots right to the heart of Frédéric Boucheron’s design genius by re-visiting four of the founder’s most notable designs from the late nineteenth century, those that marked him out as a visionary who redefined high jewellery. “With this new high jewellery collection, I pay homage to Frédéric Boucheron by sketching his portrait through these four major pieces,” says Claire Choisne.
Frédéric was the son of a draper, destined for the family business, but was drawn to jewellery and its potential to express his deep love nature, with all its charm and imperfections. Working during the heady years of Paris’s Belle Epoque, in which Darwin’s theories were embraced, the great Expositions Universelles of the 1890s offered a glimpse of a thrilling future, and Haussmann created his vision of an ordered and grandiose city; Frédéric was to jewellery what Eiffel was to engineering.
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Founded in Paris in 1858, Frédéric’s visionary approach included the decision to be the first major jeweller to move into Place Vendôme. Choosing a prime location on the corner with rue de la Paix, his colourful jewels were flooded with light. In tune with the rituals and routines of women, his windows were on the route taken by fashionable ladies on their stroll to the Tuileries gardens and across the square from the newly opened Hotel Ritz, the last cry in modern comfort. The location proved to be a stroke of genius, and Boucheron became a favourite of high society, film stars, royalty, maharajas, and artists seeking jewels in the house’s bold and distinctive style.
Like Frédéric’s story, the collection starts with a homage to the importance of 26 Place Vendôme with The Address necklace (above). The necklace features an impressive 10.01-carat emerald-cut diamond inspired by an archive design from 1839 that echoes the shape of the Place Vendôme as seen from above. References to Place Vendôme are echoed in the bold architectural volume of the pendant and in a surround of diamonds set like paving stones, framed by black enamel. A ribbon of white gold is set with baguette diamonds, adding fluidity and grace. The central diamond can be removed to be worn as a ring, a delightful detail in this impressive jewel.
The Spark necklace recognises the seminal importance of the Question Mark necklace. As fashion-forward couturiers freed women from tight corsets, restrictive bodices and trailing skirts, so Frédéric liberated women from complicated, formal jewels that required a maid’s assistance. The deceptively simple Question Mark necklace – named for the clean lines of its asymmetric, curving shape - slipped around the neck with ease thanks to hidden springs as seen in a 1884 photograph from the house archives. The Spark brings the design up to date by using eight different diamond cuts that flow through the elegant question mark shape of the necklace, lightly sweeping around and down the neck.
Fusing his knowledge of fabrics and clothing, Frédéric created jewels that draped across the body and could be easily adapted for different wear. The Silhouette continues this spirit with a jewel composed of seven metres of six slinky rows of 2,500 diamond-set beads secured by Art Deco-style clasps. The swags of diamonds can be worn in six different ways: fastened at the shoulders to drape like rippling sleeves, as a necklace, choker, bracelets or epaulette-style brooches. The Silhouette embodies Frédéric’s audaciousness and luxurious opulence.
At a time when jewellers preferred stylised, perfect representations of flowers and plants, The Untamed jewel (above) directly references Frédéric’s love of the wild side of nature. The troublesome, invasive ivy, not welcome in the repertoire of traditional jewellery, was a favourite of Frédéric, who captured its meandering, wilful beauty. Claire Choisne extends the concept into a question mark necklace that runs the entire length of the torso. Rippling with delightful details like en tremblant settings, hidden berries and barely unfurled tender leaves, the jewel can be worn long or short, in the hair, as a choker or taken apart to create a cascade of brooches strewn across the body.
Frédéric Boucheron’s vision beams out from the collection and reminds us of just why the maison has attracted legendary clients for over 150 years- from the Maharajah of Patiala in 1928 to Rihanna at the Met Gala in 2019 – each drawn by the mesmerising designs that live on under the illuminated watch of style custodian Claire Choisne.
Click to watch our Instagram reel to see the collection in motion.
