Chanel avant Chanel High Jewelry

Once upon a time

A Fine High Jewelry Collection Celebrating Special Women 

An emblematic title: Coco Avant Chanel, for the new High Jewelry Collection by the Maison, taken from the film on Gabrielle’s life. Milliner, seamstress, designer? Impossible to define. Any attribute would be too confining. Before becoming a business woman and a success, she was simply Coco, that petite girl who, in the café chantant in Moulins, was seeking a viable future. From the legendary life of this indomitable creature, the Maison every so often recovers suggestive ideas: the result of rigorous research, and just as many points of reference. On this occasion, the jewels take on the names of women who were very important to Mademoiselle. Friends who helped her grow, define her own style, and enter a complicated world that did not pertain to her. Women like her, ready to fight to establish themselves. Not only friends, but accomplices.
11 sets, all created in the atelier in Place VendÔme. The most important bears her name, Gabrielle, with its outstanding collar necklace: an icon of the Maison’s style, in white gold with a 10.2-karat pear-cut diamond on a barely accented lace-like design of camellias, another inevitable icon. The choker, with its very delicate line (1), in white gold and diamonds, is dedicated to Lucienne Rabaté, renowned milliner of that era – whose clients included Arletty and Marlène Dietrich – and who taught Coco the art of creating hats. The ribbon-like earrings and ring (2) with pear-cut diamonds are an ode to Maud Mazuel whose mundane teas, described in the many biographies written on Gabrielle, have always remained famous. The Marthe necklace, 220 Japanese pearls on three strings, gray spinels, and diamonds for the earrings (3), as well, is a triumph of chic and is dedicated to Marthe Davelli, the singer and star of the Paris Opera who wore only Chanel and who resembled her very much. The watch, with 500 brilliant-cut diamonds, along with two rings (4), is part of the Jeanne set, named after Jeanne Toussaint, the jewelry designer – very close to Louis Cartier – who was known as the “Panthère” and to whom the panther jewel concept is owed, the concept which then became the emblem of the Cartier Maison. A fine collection, with equally subtle tones. Almost austere in its apparent simplicity and one that both Coco and Chanel would have adored.