Chanel’s latest High Jewellery collection, Signes & Symboles, is a glittering celebration of the design codes first conceived by Gabrielle Chanel herself: the lion, the star, the sun and the camellia.
Today, these powerful (and very personal) talismans are given an extraordinary new life in 85 glittering high jewellery creations, released just in time for Couture season in Paris.
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As a child, Gabrielle Chanel walked the corridors of an ancient convent at Aubazine Abbey in Corrèze, where she had been abandoned by her father in 1895, passing over medieval floor mosaics depicting suns and five-pointed stars which indelibly lodged themselves in her imagination. Later, as fervent follower of astrology, Chanel also adopted the lion as her personal symbol (she was a Leo) and filled her Rue Cambon apartment with leonine figurines.
These celestial motifs exerted a powerful influence over the designer’s life and her career. Indeed, when Chanel created her first and only high jewellery line in 1932, the ‘Bijoux des Diamants’, she envisioned a “constellation” of diamond-encrusted starbursts and comets to adorn a woman’s body or hair. Today, her eponymous house still looks to the heavens for inspiration, and shimmering suns and stars have adorned everything from its hair clips to its handbags over the decades.
Likewise, few blooms are as synonymous with fashion as Chanel’s camellia. It’s said the designer fell in love with them after reading Alexandre Dumas’ 1848 novel, La Dame aux Camélias, in which the tragic heroine always wears the flower. Others claim Chanel’s lover, Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, gifted her with bunches of camellias and she became fascinated by their symmetry and lack of scent, which didn’t interfere with her own signature perfume. Whatever the reason, Chanel made the flower all her own, and was first pictured wearing a camellia pinned to her belt on the beach at Étretat, in France, around 1913.
With Signes & Symboles, Chanel’s eponymous Maison imagines a creative dialogue between all four of these important emblems, played out over four distinct chapters.
In ‘Les Imprimes’, the camellia, star and sun are arranged in graphic lines, like fabric patterns in Mme. Chanel’s couture atelier. Here, precious white or yellow gold is worked into fluid collars, plastron necklaces, statement rings and pendant earrings, adorned with white diamonds and punctuated with colourful faceted stones, such as green emeralds.
For the Imprimé Lion Necklace, which is undoubtedly the standout piece of this chapter (and of the whole collection), these symbols are joined by a white diamond lion, set directly beneath a spectacular 20.66-carat octagonal-cut sapphire.
Elsewhere, ‘Le Lion Emblematique‘ chapter sees Chanel’s noble-looking beast (which first inhabited the house’s high jewellery creations back in 2012) prowling across several new high jewellery suites – including the shimmering rose gold, diamond and emerald Lion Magistral set, with its draping, scarf-like necklace and statuesque statement ring shaped like a lion at repose (and set into its own rock crystal stand). Meanwhile, the Lion Topaze set sees the lion emerge in sunny yellow gold for an impressive collar necklace and ring, both adorned with sunny yellow sapphires, beryls, spectacular imperial topaz and glowing orange spinels.
A third chapter, ‘Les Bijoux Talismans‘, channel’s Gabrielle Chanel’s long-held belief in the protective power of her favourite symbols. Here, sparkling stars transform a yellow gold, sapphire and diamond bracelet and necklace set into glistening amulets, are suspended from a white gold necklace and bracelet like lucky charms, or picked out in diamonds and set in front of protective, shield-like forms on rings and earrings like precious armour.
The final chapter, ‘Les Symboles‘, is a trove of colourful gemstones in contrasting tones, set into sculptural and voluminous shapes. Here, Chanel’s favourite camellias run riot, blooming in turquoise and sapphires, or diamonds and pink spinels across statement necklaces and rings, and unfurling glossy-looking petals on brooches embellished with enamel, rock crystal or pink sapphires.
“My jewelry represents an idea”, Gabrielle Chanel used to say. Signes & Symboles takes the four emblems that resonated most with the trailblazing designer, and weaves them into a heady, gemstone-rich collection (one of the most colourful ever created by the Maison) infused with playfulness, creative freedom and notions of protection. In doing so, it bring Chanel’s most enduring ideas bang up to date.
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