PARIS — As a rule of thumb, Place Vendôme serves as a byword for cornerstone jewelers and houses with centuries-long heritage.

Yet, as July’s presentations during Couture Week showed, high jewelry is a bustling field that’s attracting an ever-growing crop of new brands that throw their carats in the ring alongside household names such as Boucheron, Tasaki and Chaumet.

Making first moves in Paris were Italian jeweler Vhernier, third-generation diamantaire Sahag Arslanian, London-based Jessica McCormack, Greek designer Nikos Koulis, Antwerp-based Dries Criel and green diamond specialist Garatti.

Competition is growing ever stiffer, but its pace is matched by an ever-growing market that seems more resilient to the travails affecting other luxury segments. Take Richemont, whose jewelry brands posted a third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for the quarter ending June 30.

“The great thing about high jewelry is that we are all seeing a surge in customer numbers in the past 10, 15 years,” said Charles Leung, chief executive officer of Chaumet.

They include both existing jewelry clients moving up into high jewelry territory as well as those making first-time purchases, according to the executive. The segment starts anywhere between 25,000 and 100,000 euros depending on which brand you ask, conversations during the week revealed.

Addressing expectations ranging from investment value to a desire for uniqueness, at a time where “there are not so many unique things anymore,” calls for a delicate balancing act of identity and “alternatives, new opportunities for existing collectors,” Leung noted.

There were plenty of both in Chaumet’s “Jewels by Nature.” Its naturalist treatment alighted on parings of wild plants, with diamond-set ferns enmeshed with clovers figured by a trio of pear-shaped emeralds; oats in sculpted yellow gold mixing with starflowers with yellow diamonds at their heart, or ephemeral flora like the sweetshrub, immortalized in bloom around a 44-carat pink spinel center stone on a string of sizeable pink pearls.

Fresh Shoots From Deep Roots

More than ever, executives throughout the week’s showcases talked of a fine balance between heritage and novel takes on materials and usages.

At De Beers London, the second chapter of its “Essence of Nature” collection looked to the plants of territories where diamonds are mined such as Botswana, Namibia and Canada.

The 25 designs showcased in salons just a stone’s throw from the brand’s future Rue de la Paix flagship were about spotlighting contrast as the fundamental pillar of the brand. Interplay of rough and polished diamonds continued, with a wide range of hues from white to subtle greens and browns, and the use of materials such as natural jet and grand-feu enamel.

“It was easy to say it’s a brand about diamonds — we have the legitimacy, the direct access to the source, the most beautiful diamonds so it’s a great start,” said Emmanuelle Nodale, who was named CEO of De Beers London in June.

“We realized that everything around De Beers is really around contrast and transformations and it’s really the story of the brand, having this richness coming from the mines to the final piece of jewelry,” she continued. “This uniqueness brings a lot of authenticity and I think that right now, our customers are really looking for this kind of authentic way of expressing jewelry.”

Combining that heritage with a demonstration of its range of expertise was the road chosen by Tasaki.

Save for lustrous orbs measuring between 11 and 15 millimeters on the Grâce Éternelle set, there was nary a pearl in sight in four of the five high jewelry sets introduced at the Ritz.

Exhibit A: Symphonie de Lumière, with its dynamic swirl of pear- and brilliant-cut gems looping around the neck that required some 2,025 hours of work to set nearly 36 carats of white diamonds, including a 2.41-carat pear.

“We are very strong in pearls and our history started from the pearl, but we are also the one and only sightholder [in Japan] for De Beers diamonds,” Tasaki CEO Toshikazu Tajima told WWD. “So we have very good skills to cut and polish not just diamonds but [also] colored stones. I think it’s the time where we have to speak a little bit louder about our capacity well beyond the pearl.”

Another standout was the geometric sapphire-and-diamond Mystère Bleu necklace with a velvety 21-carat center stone, clocking in at 2,265 hours of work.

An Endless Palette

Rarity was another approach, with the likes of Garatti tapping a tender green diamond hue so rare you can’t fill the palm of one hand with the stones of that color extracted in a year, said a spokesperson.

But July collections highlighted an expansive palette of metals and mined finds.

“Perhaps 10 years ago, collectors were not so keen in investing or being willing to find new stones for their own collections. They’d go for a bigger diamond, a ruby, a sapphire — something very classical,” said Silvia Damiani, vice president of Damiani Group and president of Venini. “There are other precious stones, so why don’t we use them.”

The same can be said of metals. In Vhernier’s debut high jewelry collection, aluminum lent its cloud-gray tone but also its lightness for the bold and sculptural Ardis design, which ranged between 31,000 euros for an aluminum-and-diamonds ring up to 380,000 euros for a necklace in gold and diamonds.

Houses of all sizes were also keen to show expertise and alliances that go even beyond mined finds.

Case in point: Piaget called on master feather artist Nelly Saunier, who has worked with the likes of Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Louboutin, for a set paying homage to the Yves Piaget rose.

Another conversation point was the contribution of luxury houses. Having the likes of Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Fendi in the fray with their high-end jewels has only amplified the desire to keep jewels out of the safe, noted Leung and several other jewelry executives throughout the week.

For Valérie Messika, founder and creative director of Messika, the influx of new players, bold-face fashion names or independents, is the sign that high jewelry is “a super dynamic, super structured sector,” she said.

The intersection of fashion’s codes has been a fruitful approach for the jewelry brand, which is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year and moved into the high segment 13 years ago.

Before the now-traditional runway reveal during Paris Fashion Week, the jeweler unveiled the first sets of “Terres d’Instinct” (or “lands of instinct” in English), offering graphic and abstract high jewelry designs were inspired by Africa, in a nod to the brand’s “roots of diamond.”

They were aplenty on Zebra Mnyama, a geometric collar of onyx and diamond-cut stones meant to recall a zebra’s stripes, or Fauve, where just shy of 2,500 diamonds totaling over 70 carats took cues from a lion’s paws — claw marks on the reverse and all.

But the continent’s wide-open vistas also brought a new horizon for the brand: colored gemstones, spanning from monochromatic gradients of sapphires and spinels to a 30-carat Zambian emerald taking pride of place on the Divine Enigma necklace.

This “new lexical field filled with subtleties” Messika enjoyed exploring is the first time she’s used gemstones other than white and yellow diamonds.  

Gems on the Table

Necks, arms and other limbs weren’t the only surfaces to be adorned with the treasures presented this week.

A desk or a mantlepiece were likewise the ideal surfaces to showcase Endless Motion, the magnum opus of Piaget’s 51-piece “Shapes of Extraleganza” collection, in which the Swiss watchmaker-turned-jeweler mined its connection to art and artists such as Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali.

While it gives the time, this clock developed with French artist Alex Palenski was envisioned as a piece of kinetic art, with branches set with hard stones in a palette of blues and greens nodding to the electric flashes of the black opal used for the timekeeper’s dial.

Boucheron creative director Claire Choisne offered a personal interpretation of the brand’s nature theme this year with her “Impermanence” collection, consisting of seven botanical compositions inspired by ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging.

Designed to be displayed as objets d’art or worn on the body, the arrangements in vases break up into 28 individual pieces of high jewelry. They range in color from transparent to pitch black, using state-of-the art techniques like 3D printing to achieve lifelike renderings of plants and insects.

“You see nature disappear in this collection and for me, it’s to evoke the fact that it’s precious and that it must be protected,” Choisne said.

Composition N°6, for instance, features a tulip, a eucalyptus branch and a dragonfly, crafted in borosilicate or sapphire glass and mother-of-pearl, paved with diamonds and white gold.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Composition N°1 consists of a poppy flower, sweet pea branches and a butterfly made of aventurine and black glass, paved with diamonds and black spinels, and coated in Vantablack — a material that absorbs 99.9 percent of visible light.

The culmination of 20,000 hours of work in the maison’s workshops, the one-of-a-kind compositions are priced between 900,000 euros and 1.9 million euros.

Even though not all were as spectacular as Boucheron’s table-to-body breakdowns, brands all offered pieces that were transformable, like Chaumet’s earrings that could turn asymmetric with the addition of an ear of gem-set gold wheat.

This was par for the course in a time when high jewelry is breaking free of the red carpet and special-occasion-only remit, pointed out Leung.

Easy to Wear

More than ever, the question of regular — even everyday — wear is part of the design process as high jewelry clients are increasingly expecting their jewels to work overtime.

And that’s playing into the hands of those whose decade-long labels dovetailed into high jewelry debuts.

“My main aim is for [my jewelry] to be real, not [worn] just once a year, once a special occasion — or once at couture,” said McCormack.

In her case, it was exemplified by a 10.18-carat marquise-cut diamond, set in a white gold on a yellow gold coil cuff bracelet. “If I had that on a ring it would be super in-your-face but putting it on a cuff made it [so] I could wear with jeans,” she continued.

Extending her “day diamonds” angle was the driver for her first formal foray in high jewelry, epitomized by the Scale Stack chain, a series of setting links adorned with a round gem — diamonds, rubies and sapphires were on the table — that created a precious cord effect. With their $350,000 price tag for a diamond choker version, these were meant to add pizazz but not formality to any outfit.

Should the need arise, that could be added back with the collection’s pendants, which included an 18.35 carat pear-shaped Ceylon sapphire and a 7.13-carat cushion-cut type IIa diamond.

“What I hear from clients is that they need to be able to wear them every day,” Curiel said at the Chastel Maréchal gallery, a discrete art space on Rue de Rivoli with soaring windows overlooking the Tuileries garden.

Hence a nine-piece debut centered around streamlined shapes he’s already explored, this time “with high jewelry elements” as he put it, including a 10-carat fancy yellow diamond and a snow-set emerald element dressing his geometric Double Lotus bracelet.

Having built a strong presence in Greece and the U.S. retailing at the likes of Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus for more than a decade, fine jeweler Koulis pushed upward with 10 high jewelry creations for his inaugural “selling exhibition” at Sotheby’s Paris.

Striking but surprisingly easy to slip on during the day were a futuristic modern take on the diamond rivière necklace with “moval,” or marquise-meets-oval stone cuts made even more brilliant by high-shine gold ovals on which they were set, and a chunky yellow gold chain that turned into drips of white diamonds. Both were around $800,000.

Priced to Be Worn

In recent years, the eight-figure barrier has regularly been breached, owing to extraordinary gemstones, but in July’s conversations, pricing also played into notions of wearability.

Prices in the debut Sahag Arslanian collection stayed under the 1-million-euro barrier, with the highest-priced necklace at 700,000 euros, VAT included. That was important “because you want things to be wearable [and] for clients not to be self-conscious about the worth of the jewelry on them,” he said. “I want [our pieces] to be like a very nice watch they’re wearing or the car they’re driving.”

As materials costs rise, particularly gold, which has continued to surge to breach the $3,400 per ounce barrier in recent weeks, that’s been quite the tightrope exercise.

Take Messika, where the founder said she’d so far absorbed most of the precious material’s leap in price, increasing prices across the brand by only 3 percent this year.

“I accepted it and I’m lucky because [we] are alone in deciding,” she said. “Our only ‘business partner’ in this is the client and I we don’t want to reach a price that won’t be OK for them.”

July High Jewelry’s Top Three Angles

Pink

And the hotter, the better.

Petals

Florals, for high jewelry? They were by turns dainty, charming or came in boundary-breaking materials.

Geometries

Whether it was hip to be square, the influence of Art Deco or the va-va-voom of the 1960s, abstract shapes and geometric treatments abounded.

– with contributions from Joelle Diderich