Leading jewellery houses are looking outside the atelier: to architects, industrial designers and celebrities to add investment shine to their high-end pieces.
“It’s like the big bang of diamonds,” declared Lady Amanda Harlech, the Karl Lagerfeld muse at Chanel, star-struck by the explosion of sapphires and diamonds on Marc Newson’s new Julia necklace for Boucheron. Launched in July, the industrial designer’s eye-popping necklace for the Paris jeweller contains more than 2000 gemstones and sends the message that fine jewellery defies recessionary slumps.
Coco Chanel pointedly illustrated as much in 1932. At the height of the Depression, she mounted an exhibition of diamonds in Paris. Explaining the bold move, she said: “At a time of financial crisis, in every aspect of life there appears an instinctive craving for authenticity.”
It’s a view endorsed by Stephen Lussier, executive director of De Beers Group: “Jewellery has meaning and purchases are seen not only as luxury, but [as] symbolising enduring love,” he says.
Cartier, too, believes fine jewellery is immune to a credit crisis. “We attribute our strong sales to the company’s ability to understand the evolution of its customers,” says Pierre Rainero, director of image, style and patrimony. “We have a large geographical reach.” Indeed, Cartier’s CEO and president
Bernard Fornas plans to add stores in Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, although the biggest push is into China, where Cartier aims to have 28 stores by 2012.
The excitement surrounding 21st-century designers and their work with famed jewellery houses is producing some of the most collectable jewellery in existence. The star designers aren’t necessarily jewellers – they’re star architects such as Frank Gehry (for Tiffany & Co), Zaha Hadid (for Swarovski Gem Visions Couture) and Manhattan sculptor Daniel Brush (for Van Cleef & Arpels). Then there is the celebrity designer: Elton John was asked by Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele, co-president of Chopard, to design a watch for the company, with a percentage of the proceeds going to his AIDS foundation. Says Daniela Mascetti, director of jewellery at Sotheby’s London: “A trend has emerged that confirms a new appreciation for the artist and the artistry, rather than simply the gemstone content.”
London-based Jacqueline Rabun’s collection for Georg Jensen is attracting attention, as is the work of Shaun Leane, who has collaborated with fashion designer Alexander McQueen since 1991 and counts Jade Jagger, Elton John and Liv Tyler as fans. Eugenie Niarchos, the Greek heiress who works under the professional name Eugenie N, is collaborating with the fashion house Azzaro. But the man to watch is Lorenz Bäumer, who trained as an engineer and started designing high-end jewellery only in 1992. His name is about to be elevated to new prominence with his first collection for Louis Vuitton. However, some of the world’s most famous houses – Bulgari, Chanel and Cartier among them – are more coy about their key designers. Francesco Trapani, CEO of Bulgari, will not be drawn on the subject, preferring to let the label’s distinctive jewellery speak for itself. Nicola Bulgari, the company’s vice-chairman, is custodian of the creative heritage and oversees the designers.
Cartier has not acknowledged designers since the 1940s, when Jeanne Toussaint and Peter Lemarchand created caged birds in locked cases to symbolise the German occupation of France. These were followed by the liberation brooches, the “freed bird” in red, white and blue, French national colours.
The brilliance of Cartier’s stand-alone gems speaks for itself: the whimsy and creativity of interpreting snakes, panthers, ladybirds, dragonflies and tigers into fine jewels – even articulated crocodiles as necklaces. Then there is the 69.42ct sparkler that Richard Burton gave actress Elizabeth Taylor for her 40th birthday – the first diamond in the world to be sold for more than $US1m.
Other companies, such as Christian Dior, make much of their designer: Victoire de Castellane is the poster girl for high jewellery, as the créateur behind Dior Joaillerie. But both de Castellane and Bäumer spent years anonymously designing for Chanel. Now both their names are up in lights.
Most of the luxury houses are banking on their clientele’s quest for the best. Says Arthur Duncan, a cultural adviser to collectors worldwide, “Quality always brings prices up.” This appears to be the case whether anonymous ateliers or star designers are involved. A ruby-and-diamond brooch made by Fulco di Verdura, who worked with Coco Chanel, cost the Hollywood legend Tyrone Power $US8900 in 1941. Today, at $US135,000 ($165,000), it’s showing a 1500 per cent increase. In 2007, Sotheby’s sold a Cartier pearl necklace once owned by the Duchess of Windsor for $US3.6m ($4.3m). Just a decade earlier, American designer Calvin Klein had paid $US733,333 for it.
Behind the shine
Victoire de Castellane
Artistic director Christian Dior Joaillerie
“These are a reminder that time passes and we need to take advantage of it, use it well,” says Victoire de Castellane of her tiny sculptured skulls of jade, opal, quartz and obsidian. Her latest collection, Kings and Queens, features pendants and rings, each miniature skull wearing a diamond crown, tiara and/or chokers, transforming macabre to magical.
De Castellane was first inspired by her grandmother, Sylvia Hennessy (of cognac fame), who changed her jewels several times a day. At age 11, Victoire was already designing her own. Since she joined Christian Dior in 1998, de Castellane has shown flair and originality, shaking up the often conservative world of high jewellery. She has completed 13 collections, including delicate charm bracelets and heart pendants. Each year her work becomes more flamboyant.
In 2008 she based her colourful Milly Carnivora collection on carnivorous flowers, conjured from an imaginary island she called Belladone. Her inspiration was belladonna, the toxic flower that Renaissance women used to dilate their pupils as a sign of sexual arousal. These cocktail rings the size of gulls’ eggs were vivid enamels entwined with tiny insects, which caught the eye of investors.
In stark contrast, this year’s Kings and Queens is pure black and white. “I didn’t want to use colour, so it’s all diamonds, antique beads and pear-shaped stones, and so it looks like embroidery. “I like things to be over the top – either too big or too small, but never in the middle. That comes from my grandmother, when I tried on her rings and they seemed so huge. Average doesn’t interest me at all.”
Lorenz Bäumer
Louis Vuitton
Women’s fascination with jewellery as investment pieces is one reason the 44-year-old Bäumer is flying high. He designs for those on the hunt for the new and unexpected. “My goal is to design jewellery that is so distinctive, one would know who it belongs to even without its wearer,” he says. Before work starts, clients are asked for details on their favourite flowers, foods, fragrances and architecture.
Bäumer, whose father was a German diplomat and mother a French porcelain painter, graduated in engineering in Paris, and started out designing costume jewellery. In 1992 he moved on to high-end work, which he now does from a third-floor atelier on the Place Vendôme where he shares an address with venerable names such as Boucheron, Bulgari and Chanel. He is influenced by nature (“surfing inspires me”), which may explain such spectacular pieces as his diamond pavé ropes shaped as nautical knots around marine-coloured stones.
The designer is a bit of a Renaissance man, the silent partner behind watches, fragrance bottles and gifts for big brand names such as
Baccarat, Cartier and Piaget. This month his name will reach a global audience when Louis Vuitton introduce his Les Ardentes line, a series of diamond-set pieces that reinterpret the house’s monogram flower. “Fine jewellery is the highest, purest form of luxury... it is able to lift a brand to a new level of elegance and exclusivity,” he says.
Frank Gehry
Tiffany & Co
Tiffany & Co’s history of collaboration with contemporary artists is unrivalled. The landmark New York store that symbolises quintessential American style started the tradition in the 1950s when artist Jean Schlumberger reigned supreme. Schlumberger had mastered his craft in the ’30s, creating costume jewellery with legendary French couturier Elsa Schiaparelli. When he joined Tiffany’s in 1956, he shifted the emphasis – and the fashion – away from extortionately priced stones towards “design as art”.
In 1974 Elsa Peretti introduced Diamonds by the Yard, and in 1980 Paloma Picasso offered her first collection, with the dove central to her bold designs.
The newest star in the Tiffany stable is Frank Gehry, one of the world’s most experimental architects. No surprise, then, that the jewellery he designs reflects his fluid and sensual buildings. The sharp angles, curious juxtapositions and curvy lines of his architecture are perfectly scaled to complement the human body. He uses two unusual materials: black gold and the creamy cacholong stone, along with silver and diamonds. Gehry says he has always been interested in designing jewellery. And this is chic. There are four collections: the fluid Fish, linear Torque, curvaceous Orchid, and Axis, a series of interlocking bracelets.