Boucheron’s High Jewellery Art Deco Collection Is Not Just For Women
A modern proposition.
Boucheron's Creative Director Claire Choisne (Photo: Boucheron)
Delving into the brand’s archives for fresh inspiration, Boucheron’s Creative Director Claire Choisne presents a high jewellery Art Deco collection made for the women, and men, of today.
Related article: Boucheron’s Iconic Question Mark Necklace Is A Pure Statement On Style
Tell us more about the latest high jewellery collection, Histoire de Style, Art Déco.
For me, the main focus was to show the beauty of our legacy, but in a modern way and to keep contemporary creation as a goal. My team and I spent quite a long time looking through the archives of this period, and I was quite surprised because Art Deco, to me, meant only one style. But the archives showed that there were in fact many possibilities. I choose my favourite archival pieces and realised three things: Firstly, all the pieces that I love from the archives had a sense of purity, with pure lines and a simple design. Then there was the fact that the pieces I selected were always black and white, with sometimes a touch of colour through rubies, emeralds or sapphires. I kept the emeralds because they were an obvious choice for Art Deco and also because the green is really vivid. And lastly, the pieces were undoubtedly feminine, but with a masculine feel as well. So those three points worked like a recipe for me to create new pieces that have an Art Deco feel, but in a new way.
Related article: Jewellery Designer Simone Ng Ensures That Every Gem She Creates Is One Of A Kind
Chevalière Emeraude ring (Photo: Boucheron)
Related article: The Latest And Most Talked-About Jewellery Collections
The campaign images for this collection play with that feminine-masculine nuance as well, with bows on men and cravats on women.
Yes! In the beginning, it was not the point to create pieces for men or women; I wasn’t thinking that way. When we finish the drawings for the jewellery, what my team and I love to do is to photoshop them on pictures of usually women, but we try with pictures of men as well; to analyse the style and see how they can wear the pieces. When I saw the results, I fell in love with the drawings on the men. I loved how cool the cravat, the tie, the signet rings, et cetera, looked because, in the Roaring Twenties, women took items from the men and created new styles with them. What’s interesting is that women are empowered now (there’s a reversal of roles) and it’s okay for men to wear women’s pieces. The tie, for example, is something that we took from the men’s wardrobe to create a new design before giving it back to them with diamonds and emeralds.
Lavallière Diamants brooch version (Photo: Boucheron)
Related article: Why Are All The It Girls Obsessed With This Watch?
Transformability features strongly in the collection. Can you tell us more about it?
We have, of course, great craftsmen at Boucheron that know how to manage these kinds of pieces. But the main point was to be able to give multi-wear options in an easy way without the need for tools or a lot of time. Like the Noeud Diamants ring, which can transform from a bow-tie ring to a solitaire ring and brooch easily. The same for the Ruban Diamants [piece]—in two clicks, it can go from a belt to a headband to a choker to a bracelet. And it’s not gimmicky. Each look is as strong as the next.