Chic Surprises - Jewelry Connoisseur

Warm tones and rare gems dominate the jewelry offerings at Paris Fashion Week

With the jewelry world looking forward to the shows and soirees coming up in July, January’s Paris Fashion Week may have fallen by the wayside. Nonetheless, the latter event — usually lighter on the jewelry — was full of surprises.

Unlike a few years ago, when most of the high-end houses unveiled wheat-themed pieces that showed little variety, luxury jewelers strove for originality this year, with each one keeping its designs and inspirations secret until the end to prevent others from copying them.

Solar colors
While Pantone has dubbed Ultra Violet the color of the year for 2018, it seems some major jewelry houses are watching the sunset for inspiration. The pieces they’ve put out feature stones such as imperial orange topaz and yellow beryl (heliodore) for Chanel, orange African tourmaline for Geneva-based designer Suzanne Syz, padparadscha sapphires with impressive hues of pink and orange at Chaumet, and spessartite garnets at Paris-based jeweler Reza. The Dior creative team went for pink tourmalines, while Lydia Courteille has launched a new collection full of pink and red spinels and high-quality rhodochrosites.

Chanel yellow gold earrings featuring African sapphires, orange Brazilian topazes and diamonds; Chanel yellow gold bangle featuring heliodores and diamonds; Chaumet white gold ring featuring diamonds and padparadscha sapphire.

Beads and tassels

Gemstone beads have largely left the scene of recent high-end jewelry collections, but 2018 may see them make a comeback. Many of the jewelry houses offered top-quality beads and were not afraid to mix different gems and materials. Black spinels, moonstones and lapis-lazuli made appearances in Boucheron’s works, with pearls and emeralds for Reza, and blue chalcedony and pink coral for London-based David Morris.

One popular format for these beads was tassel earrings, affirming a trend that arose at the Van Cleef & Arpels show in July 2017.

David Morris pink gold earring featuring diamond and pink coral beads; Boucheron white gold earring featuring diamonds and black spinel tassels.

Chandelier earrings

The chandelier ear-jewelry trend was everywhere. David Morris unveiled some especially impressive earrings, including a set combining diamonds and paraiba tourmalines. Colored-aluminum jewels from the likes of Suzanne Syz remained in fashion, as did highly detailed white gold earrings from Chaumet and colorful specimens from Lydia Courteille.

Suzanne Syz aluminium and white gold earrings set with diamonds; David Morris white gold earrings featuring diamonds and paraiba tourmalines; Boucheron pink gold earrings set with diamonds and rhodonite garnets.

Unusual gemstones

While diamonds and the Big Three colored gems (ruby, emerald and sapphire) showed up in the latest collections, jewelry houses featured more unusual stones as well, to perfect effect. This year has consistently confirmed that customers want something different and are ready for gems such as Chanel’s imperial topaz or Lydia Courteille’s rhodochrosites.

Suzanne Syz yellow gold ring set with peridots and a +40 carat rare orange tourmaline; Lydia Courteille pendant and a ring in pink gold, spinels, sapphires and rhodochrosites.

Beryl stones in particular made a breakthrough this season. Along with Chanel’s heliodores and the beautiful Colombian emeralds from Chopard and David Morris, the show let us admire large morganites courtesy of Lydia Courteille, and rare green beryls from Dior. The only thing missing was bixbite from the Wah Wah Mountains — and if the beryl trend continues, we may well get to see some in July.