KYOTO — Shining stars and majestic lions may rule at Chanel, but for its latest high jewelry collection unveiled Monday, soaring to the top is all down to having a moonshot mentality.

After all, the best example is Gabrielle Chanel herself, rising from the obscurity of an orphanage to the heights of couture and Place Vendôme.

Titled “Reach for the Stars,” the collection took cues from the founder’s Hollywood era, a brief period of the late 1920s to early ‘30s that saw her design costumes for the silver screen and stars like Gloria Swanson.

“It’s all about this idea found across the house that whatever theme we explore, it becomes inscribed in the history of the house but it also brings us back to Gabrielle Chanel,” said Frédéric Grangié, president of Chanel watches and fine jewelry.

Case in point are the three chapters that articulate the 110 pieces, with around 90 unveiled at the Kyoto National Museum. One explores comets as a symbol of freedom, nodding to the seminal “Bijoux de Diamant” jewelry; another alights on lions representing boldness, a recurring subject owing to the couturier’s star sign.

Epitomizing the former was the “Dreams Come True” set, centered around a masterpiece necklace evoking a glamorous haute couture neckline with a lace-like cloud of diamonds and a cord-like black line serving as a graphic trim.

For the latter, the regal feline was portrayed in radiant majesty to evoke an aura of power, its features turning into a halo of glittering stones punctuated by stars as evidenced in the “Be the One” and “Strong as a Lion” sets.

In the lineup were some 27 millionaire pieces and a handful pushed into eight-figure territory.

Wings, appearing for the first time in Chanel high jewelry, were the subject of the collection’s central chapter owing to her Hollywood-era designs but also to a phrase the couturier coined in 1938.

“If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing,” she said, a dictate that inspired Patrice Leguéreau, the house’s director of the jewelry creation studio who passed away in November at age 53.

New as these may be in Chanel’s high jewelry vernacular, wings are a theme that has appeared in the house’s couture since her stint in Hollywood, a moment that also had an impact on her “Bijoux de Diamants” collection, according to Grangié.

“[Her] short period in Hollywood certainly had an enormous impact on the presentation in 1932 because [it] was very cinematographic, with mannequins positioned like actresses,” he said. “Given those [designs] and a staging that could be a film set, it certainly influenced in the way she conceived and saw high jewelry.”

The legacy of Leguéreau will be no less important.

A masterpiece in the collection was the Wings of Chanel necklace, a graphic interpretation that unfurls to frame the neck with a supple openwork design with a long hanging pendant that can be detached to wear as a bracelet.

The idea of flight is furthered by the orientation of marquise-set diamonds on the wing’s remiges, which are articulated to better espouse different bust shapes. A mix of folded and triangular prong settings further telegraph the idea of lightness, despite over 45 carats of fancy cut diamonds.

At the center of the design is a Padparadscha sapphire of 19.55 carats, a weight that felt particularly auspicious given the house’s numeric signifiers.

The stone’s delicate rosy-orange hue, evoking a glowing rising light, epitomizes another throughline of the collection.

Leguéreau “imagined pieces kissed by the light of the sun at sunset and dawn, with these colors that blaze on the horizon,” said the house. “It’s about that magical moment between day and night when the high jewelry sparkles on the skin.”

Designs duly explore a wide color range in metal and stone that went from spessartite garnets and a 20.64-carat oval imperial topaz in the “Sunny Days” set to a cascade of velvety blue sapphires from Sri Lanka on the After Midnight necklace and the black DLC-coated gold cord in “Dreams Come True.”

Taking pride of place among the 39 pieces tapping this motif was a set of five brooches, simply titled “Five Wings.”

Each featured an intricate central element finely hand-painted by a Kyoto-based lacquer artist, the scion of a dynasty specialized in this meticulous and rare craft.

Leguéreau had “long been fascinated by this idea of excellence pushed to its pinnacle,” recalled Grangié, and over the years had worked bespoke orders with Yūji Shihou Okada, a master lacquerer who was distinguished as a living treasure by the Japanese government, as well as his successor and son Yoshio Okada. 

The quintet embodied Leguéreau’s vision of high jewelry as “an art form, a language, and a legacy” as Grangié wrote in a note welcoming guests to Kyoto.

“It is absolutely essential that we transcribe the creations of Patrice [Leguéreau] and the studio at the highest level of excellence so that these pieces sit in a patrimony on a 20-, 30-, 50-year scale and that one day, when a magistral exhibition on Chanel in our days takes place, they are part of it,” said Grangié. “That’s a clear goal for us.”

But before these jewels get another museum treatment, ensuring their way into collectors’ hands goes through a crystal clear vision of what Chanel’s high jewelry — a bright young thing established in 1993 — is all about.

Already, de rigueur elements for the Rue Cambon house were given fresh spins that saw them layered and interwoven, with stars peppering wings and both adding further sparkle to lion-themed designs.

“For Chanel, it is important to always bring themes that constitute this living patrimony that will have a capital importance in high jewelry,” the executive said. “But we are still in this creation phase and that’s what’s different compared to more institutional houses who have two centuries of history and revisit themes that are their own.”

Coming after last year’s “Haute Joaillerie Sport,” this year’s opus was about “illustrating two facets of excellence such as we conceive it at Chanel,” said Grangié. “It’s about creations pushed [to their utmost] but with the iron discipline of being a pure player” in terms of craft, gem sourcing and execution.

It’s an approach that has served the house well in its bid to woo a clientele that spans those attracted to its fashions to high jewelry collectors, a highly savvy cohort that numbers in the hundreds worldwide in Grangié’s estimation.

But having a clock topped with a statuette of Gabrielle Chanel standing on a diamond-set black jade base — a dead ringer for an Academy Award gong — snapped up long before the collection’s unveiling is a happy byproduct.

“The priority of high jewelry is brand elevation, brand equity, so going higher and higher in terms of know-how, exceptional stones in service of a creation that will always be uniquely Chanel,” he said. “The top line is a consequence that follows, that grows, but that’s not the [primary focus] in high jewelry, which is about pulling the activity upwards.”

And turbulent times rife with headwinds and macroeconomic challenges call for adroit navigation, even when equipped with such gem-set wings.

“Instability is likely to persist for a good long while so we are very vigilant,” the executive continued. “But we are staying the course regarding launches, all the programs [planned] for 2026 and 2027 and more than ever, in terms of investment — there’s no change there.”

These include the development of new collections but also the pursuit of vertical integration and retail plans.

Buoying this cautious but not conservative approach is the even distribution of Chanel’s jewelry business between the U.S., Asia and a bloc formed by Europe and the Middle East but also the jewelry sector’s overall health.

“Not only is it a category that is resilient but it remains afloat and continues to generate growth,” the executive said. “I believe this will continue in years to come and the category itself is very, very, very positive.”

With branded luxury jewelry accounting for some 35 percent of the global market, estimated at $90.2 billion in 2025 and expected to grow over 5 percent annually according to Statista, it remains a category of luxury where “potential for everyone” remained “very significant” for Grangié. 

The presentation in Kyoto was therefore as much about honoring Leguéreau by following ideas he’d drawn up with Grangié as it was a celebration the rich chapter of Chanel’s high jewelry history written under his tenure.

A gala evening at the Shogunzuka Seiryuden temple kicked off with a drone show that had the title writ large across the sky above the former Imperial capital, drawing oohs and aaahs from a crowd that included Japanese actress Nana Komatsu, Thailand’s Chutimon ” Aokbab” Chuengcharoensukying and South Korean actress Kim Go-eun.

Grangié paid homage to Leguéreau as “the soul of the collection…gone too soon” while highlighting that the style vocabulary he imagined, along with Chanel’s in-house expertise in high jewelry crafts and stones, will “really build the Chanel of the future.”

“What you have here is a very, very important collection,” the executive said. “I think it will make a lot of sense 20 years from now, 30 years from now because when you think about high jewelry, only the long term prevails.”