Fashion week, it seems, is always happening somewhere. Now, it is starting to feel that way with jewelry, too.
While presentations were once primarily focused on Couture weeks in Paris, destination showcases began in late March, when top clients were invited to Milan to view Bulgari’s Eclettica.
In May, Cartier unveiled Le Choeur des Pierres, or Chorus of Stones, at the Château Saint-Maur, near Saint-Tropez, France. Louis Vuitton invited top clients to the Kasbah D’if, outside Marrakesh, Morocco, to see Mythica, a lineup inspired by the 12 Labors of Hercules, and Dior traveled to Venice to reveal Diorissima.
Chanel chose La Pausa, Gabrielle Chanel’s villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera, for a preview of its Signes & Symboles collection. And Chaumet unveiled A Journey through Nature, the first full collection by Olga Corsini, its new high jewelry and jewelry design director, at L’Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay, outside Paris.
Even so, there is much to see in Paris this week, and for good reason: Jewelry sales led luxury growth in 2025, reaching an estimated 32 billion euros ($36.7 billion), according to Bain & Company.
Amid continuing volatility in the diamond market and the skyrocketing prices of precious metals, jewelers have expanded their palettes to embrace less conventional gems such as morganite, rubellite and sugilite alongside ornamental elements including lapis lazuli, turquoise, moonstone, jade and mother-of-pearl.
Maximalist shapes in singular colors and humbler materials also reflect a craving for something unexpected, said Vincent Grégoire, the director of consumer trends and insights at Nelly Rodi, a business and creative consultancy in Paris.
“Diamonds are still magical but they’ve started feeling disembodied, almost virtual,” he observed, referring to lab-grown stones. “Now, jewelers have to seek rarity elsewhere, in color, in nature’s flukes, in unexpected materials that carry a powerful emotional charge.”
Large gemstones in the full range of skin tones — pale to dark — have also been trending. While the long arc of quiet luxury may be one reason, Mr. Grégoire said, he noted that such unconventional combinations might be a natural reaction to artificial intelligence.
“With A.I. standardizing so many things, radical creativity becomes all the more urgent because luxury, and jewelry in particular, is above all about emotion,” he said.
Younger buyers also have been gravitating to jewels for different reasons. “Clients buy for the gemstones, the workmanship, the symbolism, to own a design moment,” he said. “For jewelry houses, the challenge is that those people are not necessarily the same client.”
A Horse of a Different Color
In the Chinese zodiac, this is the Year of the Horse.
But for Into the Horsescape, Hermès’s ninth collection of haute bijouterie and largest to date, Pierre Hardy, the house’s creative director of fine jewelry, said he wanted to suggest equine attributes in different ways.
“Stones and metal are very hard, almost hostile materials, so I wanted to make them as soft and sensual as possible,” Mr. Hardy said in an interview.
A 90-piece collection, featuring several pieces that Hermès called masterpiece jewels, centered on rose gold, diamonds, and warm-hued materials such as pale coral, pink opal, agate, tiger’s-eye and black jade.
Most of the collection’s 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 pavé of blue-gray spinels was set with a 156.71-carat orange moonstone.
An 18th-century harness piece in the shape of a saddle, from the Hermès 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.
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.
“It’s a little experimental in that jewelry can suggest clothes in the same way that bustiers or jackets can almost be jewels,” Mr. Hardy said. “The difference is that trends pass; the desire for a jewel doesn’t. That’s what interests me.”
A.I. Meets Craft
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’s New York in October.
Ms. Choisne said when she began thinking about the collection in 2022, A.I. was emerging as a constant topic.
“I was scared at first, and that’s the genesis of this collection,” she said in an interview. “I love technology and innovation, but its amplitude and speed affected me more than usual.
“What’s precious is us,” Ms. Choisne continued. “We are all alike, yet every one of us is unique. So, my starting point became: How do you do that through jewelry?”
Called Human Being, the latest collection bridges two extremes: uniformity (A.I. was asked what a high jewelry necklace looks like. Its answer: “Clusters.”) and the unmistakably handmade.
Five parures, each with the same bib necklace and ring designs, used gemstones such as clear rock crystal, peach-toned Brazilian morganite and onyx.
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 pavé, was decorated with a floral motif by Alexandra Carle, a micropainter in the Haute Savoie region of France.
Another necklace, in white gold and 580 carats of smoky quartz with a 1.74-carat triangular diamond and pavé, 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.
Ms. Choisne described the collection as an anti-A.I. manifesto.
“My point was to prove that true innovation lives in gestures and know-how. That’s what makes a jewel unique.”
Of Gods and Gems
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.
The land of the pharaohs is familiar terrain. When Tutankhamen’s 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.
The latest descendants of that bracelet, such as the Paysage Merveilleux in blue sapphires and black spinels, were made using the house’s 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.
To achieve a collection high on color and contrast, the studio studied expressions of Egyptian art from Jean-François Champollion’s work with hieroglyphs in the 19th century through the Memphis movement, said Catherine Rénier, the president and chief executive of the Richemont-owned jewelry house, in a video interview.
“There was a real focus on innovative color expressions,” she said. “Ornamental 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.” All pieces are stamped with hieroglyph cartouches spelling the house’s name.
The scarab resurfaced in chrysoprase and a nearly 4-carat triangle-cut green tourmaline on the Élan 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.
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.
“Ornamental stones create room to play,” Ms. Rénier said. “The polychromy in this collection is very different from what we have done in the past.”
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