Celebrity Life

Harry Woolf, the founder of Underwoods the Chemists, honed his eye over 50 years of collecting, and had a collection to rival that of Her Majesty the Queen

Capucinne becomes among the first jewellery brands to offer cryptocurrency as a mode of payment on their website.

The post Capucinne Among First Jewellers to Offer Cryptocurrency Payment appeared first on LUXUO.

The role of the Bond Girl has evolved and developed over the years, but diamonds really are forever. As No Time To Die makes its long-awaited debut, Tatler looks back at the glittering pieces that have graced the beloved spy franchise through the years

The Cartier ruby bracelet symbolised love, passion, good fortune, courage and prosperity, and features a personalised message from the Duke

Watching the devastating events unfold in Afghanistan has no doubt been a horrifying and helpless experience for many, as we, rooted to our seats with our eyes fixated on the screen, wonder if there's anything we could do to help the over half a million Afghans forced to flee from their homes.

Rosie Lillis, a jewellery specialist and a new mother, keenly felt that she needed to do something, saying, "The threat to safety, basic rights to work and education, not to mention lives, is so real and I want to help in whatever way I can to try and support those protecting the women and children most at risk."

Her solution? "Jewellers for Afghanistan", a charity auction to raise funds for the charity Women for Afghan Women, which is a grassroots women's rights organisation helping to evacuate and provide urgent resources, shelter and care to vulnerable women and children during this crisis.

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Turns out, many others wanted to help. Twenty-five independent jewellers have responded to Lillis' call to donate a piece of jewellery, including popular brands like Solange, Shaune Leane, Pippa Small, Annoushka and Theo Fennell, to emerging talents like Jessie Thomas, Christopher Thompson-Royds, Rachel Boston and Otiumberg.

Their jewellery will be auctioned as part of an online auction with London fine art auction house Roseberys, with official bidding running for a week from now until Monday, October 4, 2021. In support of this important cause, Roseberys has also waived its fees, meaning that 100 percent of the proceeds raised will go directly to the charity.

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Here's the full list of participating jewellers: Annoushka, Bear Brooksbank, Boochier, By Pariah, Christopher Thompson-Royds, Gee Woods, Georgina Boyce, Humphrey Butler, Jessie Thomas, Liv Luttrell, Minka Jewels, Otiumberg, Pippa Small, Rachel Boston, Rebus, Rosa de la Cruz, Ruth Tomlinson, Shaun Leane, Solange Azagury Partridge, Sophie Keegan, Sophie Theakston, Tada and Toy, Tessa Packard, Theo Fennell and Theodora Warre.

Discover the Jewellers for Afghanistan charity auction and place your bids for this incredible cause here.

The post 25 Independent Jewellers Band Together in Charity Auction to Support Afghan Women appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The oldest jeweller on the Place Vendôme in Paris is also the most forward-thinking. We talk to Boucheron's Claire Choisne about her latest high-jewellery collection and how she's making history by turning jewels holographic.

Frédéric Boucheron, who founded his maison in 1858, set up shop on Place Vendôme in Paris 35 years later, the first jeweller to do so. Old the name may be, but its collections are anything but traditional. Under the hand of creative director Claire Choisne, Boucheron has consistently revealed jewellery collections that stun with their avant-garde aesthetics, unusual sources of inspiration and mind-boggling techniques. Some of her best works could be seen in Boucheron’s Carte Blanche high jewellery collections, such as the Fleurs Éternelles rings in 2018, which immortalise real flower petals in gorgeous rings that will never lose their vibrance, shape or colour, and last year’s Contemplation collection, inspired by the sky, for which the house used NASA technology to capture stardust into rock-crystal shells, then set them with diamonds in a completely otherworldly necklace. Needless to say, I’ve admired Choisne’s creations for a long time.

This year, Choisne yet again exercises her creativity and technical prowess, this time with the Holographique collection. She’s long studied the relationship between light and colour, and the collection is her thesis. “I wanted to bring a new meaning to light,” she says. “To capture its very essence, which is colour. Every piece is like a prism, catching the complexity of light by representing every single colour held within it.”

Choisne studies Boucheron’s archives often, and colour has always been an important pillar to the house. “But I didn’t want to do something that I already see a lot of,” she says. “Normally, a colour collection was about one stone and how that stone gives you one colour. And then you play with different stones to form a palette. But I didn’t want to do that at Boucheron. For me, you see, I wanted to propose something new. And to work on distinguishing between light and colour and playing with holographic effects. That’s what I think colour means for Boucheron.”

Frédéric Boucheron would have approved of this collection, I tell Choisne, but she laughs and says she can’t know for sure. But her admiration for the founder is evident. “When I first arrived at the maison and discovered the collection of Frédéric Boucheron himself, I understood immediately that he was a visionary. He was quite free to create and invent new techniques. He was bold enough to cut rubies in the style of diamonds, which at that time was not a common thing to do,” she says.

Frédéric Boucheron also created the first question-mark necklace, which is now an emblematic design for the house. “It was a surprise for me to learn that it was Boucheron himself who invented this technique,” says Choisne. “I’m a jeweller too and I make jewellery, but when I looked at those question-mark necklaces, I said, ‘Wow.’ It looked really simple and pure in design, but it was so technically creative.”

Embodying the spirit of her predecessors, Choisne also chooses to be completely bold and innovative in her approach to jewellery. She says all her collections start out as dreams and of free brainstorming without limits. Then, she looks externally to express her vision. “I’ll ask people from different sectors other than jewellery what tools existed that could help me achieve those dreams,” she says. “I try to be as open-minded as possible and I’m not afraid to ask for help or advice from others to find a technique or a way to work with non-traditional jewellery materials.”

Choisne was inspired by artist Olafur Eliasson and architect Luis Berragan for the Holographique collection. She visited an exhibition in London when she began working on the collection in 2019 and found many parallels in Eliasson’s works, which she delighted in. As for Berragan, she had the chance to visit a house he designed in Mexico where she met someone who’d worked with the late architect and explained to her his creative processes, and the way he handled the link between light and colour.

Wanting to create the effects of a prism on jewels, Choisne sought to find a way to make holographic jewellery, something that’s never existed in the world of jewellery. When she shared her ideas with her team, they responded with a mix of fright and joy. Says Choisne: “They know they have a big challenge, but at the same time it’s quite fun to do something new. It’s a mixed feeling of stress and excitement, but we’re very much together in on it.”

To make it happen, Boucheron’s team discovered Saint-Gobain, a French company that made mirrors in the past but now produces high-performance materials for a variety of applications. Saint-Gobain had the capability to create a holographic effect but had never tried it on jewels.

It was a challenge, but the team succeeded – from discovering three rare opals, a 10.38-carat pear-cut and rose-coloured opal and a 30.98-carat blue-green cabochon opal from Australia and a 50.95-carat pearly white opal from Ethiopia, which became the central stones of the Illusion rings, to slicing rock crystal to a thickness of less than 2mm and applying a holographic effect to them.

“It’s poetic and futuristic at the same time,” says Choisne says of the Holographique necklace, deeming it a personal highlight in the collection. “I love the fact that craftsmen successfully hid the moving parts of the necklace, even though all of the necklace was transparent with the rock-crystal blades, making it really flexible.”

Continuing with the epic of Fleurs Éternelles, the Chromatique sees each petal of peony and pansy moulded in white ceramic, which Boucheron’s craftsmen had to shape by hand. The material is then adorned with holographic coating and turned into a pair of rings and a brooch, taking the treasured floral theme to new realms.

It’s not only Choisne’s methods and imagination that are forward-thinking at Boucheron, but its new campaigns break with tradition by capturing the zeitgeist of contemporary culture. High jewellery is not confined to the necks and arms of women; men can wear jewellery too – and wear it well. “In the last Contemplation collection, we started putting jewellery on men,” says Choisne when we touch on the topic.

“For me, I didn’t care whether it was men or women. What’s important for me is the aesthetic effect. I really thought some pieces worked differently when they were worn by a man or a woman. In this collection, for example, when you saw the brooches on men, it became so much more interesting. So for each piece, I’d ask myself, ‘What’s the best aesthetic result?’ That’s how we decided to put several pieces on men.”

The post Boucheron’s Carte Blanche Holographique High Jewellery Collection is Light Years Ahead appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

She’s been named as a Tiffany’s House Ambassador and an imminent deal with Chanel is rumoured. But what’s really next for this teenage wunderkind with the world at her feet?

Tiffany & Co. and Supreme are rumoured to be collaborating for the Fall/Winter 21 season.

The post Are Supreme x Tiffany and Co. Collaborating? appeared first on LUXUO.

Gong Li joins her fellow ambassadors such as Lily Collins, Ella Balinska and Jackson Wang in celebrating Cartier’s timeless style and craftsmanship.

The post Acclaimed Actress Gong Li is Cartier High Jewellery’s Newest Global Ambassador appeared first on LUXUO.

Aside from reimagining Tiffany’s Blue Box®, the highly-sought artist also debut a new Knot collection with the American jeweller.

The post Daniel Arsham Transforms Tiffany & Co.’s Iconic Blue Box appeared first on LUXUO.

Embrace your inner magpie with the best of British bijou

Alessandro Michele takes maximalism to the next level with his second high jewellery collection for Gucci.

The post Gucci Hortus Deliciarum, Celebrating the Best of Mother Nature appeared first on LUXUO.