VAN CLEEF & ARPELS “QUATRE CONTES DE GRIMM” HIGH JEWELLERY COLLECTION, PARIS COUTURE WEEK 2018
Hot on the heels of Paris Haute Couture and four days of fashion shows comes the latest collections of high jewellery from many of the world’s top jewellery brands like Buccellati, Dior, Chanel, De Beers, Piaget, Chaumet, Van Cleef & Arpels, Chopard, Louis Vuitton, David Yurman, Ana Khouri, Lydia Courteille and more. To fully embrace this event and give you a real sense of the jewellery I tried on, I put together some video highlights for GEMOLOGUE IGTV. It’s an exclusive event open only to clients and journalists and a great honour to attend. I hope you enjoy my curation of new jewellery discoveries from Paris Haute Couture.
Always so excited to see the latest Van Cleef & Arpels high jewellery collection, showcased again this year at my favourite jewellery school, L’école V&A. Van Cleef & Arpels represents the art of high jewellery with their legendary creatures, fairies, mermaids, and mysterious animals, imagining great works of art like Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. Van Cleef & Arpels have a history of bringing to life charming creatures using only the finest gemstones and diamonds. Remember The Secret Van Cleef & Arpels high jewellery collection from last year?
This year Van Cleef & Arpels high jewellery collection interpreted four tales of the Brothers Grimm. The cheerful princess of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, the wise heroes of The Three Feathers and The Golden Bird and the solidarity of the Town Musicians of Bremen provide precious inspiration for this new High Jewellery collection.
In the new Quatre contes de Grimm haute jewellery collection, each stone is carefully selected for elegance of form and beauty. A blue Burmese sapphire sets the tone for a moonlit night, a yellow diamond evokes the sweetness of a golden apple, while an emerald represents a garden in full bloom. Each stone whispers of friendship, love, joy and hope. I could spend hours looking at these pieces.
See for yourself my firsthand experience on GEMOLOGUE IGTV.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
Dancing ladies is a signature of Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery. Arabesque ballerinas, fanciful fairies, and now dancing princesses, each hold the same graceful charm. Lose yourself in the Cinderella fantasy, look at the diamond shoes sparkling to the beat of the music, the sumptuous gowns floating to the rhythm of their dance. These Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery designs bring out the princess in everyone!
Van Cleef & Arpels Le Prince et La Cape Clip
Le Prince adorns himself in a cape of diamonds and dresses for the ball in emeralds, sapphires, turquoise, onyx, he uses a cloak, oval cut garnet of 3.43 carats, to become invisible and secretly follows the princesses to the ball.
The Golden Bird
In this Brothers Grimm fable a golden bird appears as a vision of light before a young man who will become his rescuer. The Oiseau d’Or clip with warm yellow gold and feathers of diamonds, yellow sapphires, orangey garnets evoke the bird’s journey through an onyx night in the light of a silvery moon.
The Three Feathers
As the tale goes, the hero brings back a lavish Serapi oriental carpet, seen here as a red ruby combined with a central medallion in two colours. A detachable cushion-cut sapphire (13.01 ct Sri Lanka) and a cushion-cut pink sapphire (3.08 ct Burma) becomes a clip, while the long necklace becomes two, one in coral, the other in cultured pearls. It’s a vivid and luminous piece delicately accented with two shades of coral, blue and pink sapphires, and diamonds.
Van Cleef & Arpels Panace Mystérieux Clip
Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery designs this clip with their virtuoso technique, Vitrail Mystery Set using round and baguette diamonds to give the feeling of lightness and delicacy. Creating many layers of colour to reflect tone and relief in velvety pastel shades of blue, mauve, and yellow sapphires.
Town Musicians of Bremen
Four retired animals, a cat, dog, rooster and donkey, determined to make it on the road are drawn to the light of a window in the dark forest night. Van Cleef & Arpels high jewellery depicts that window in this magnificent Lumiere bracelet. The centre diamond sits in a halo of white and pink diamonds radiating out to black spinels, onyx and round and baguette-cut diamonds.
Van Cleef & Arpels Lumiere Bracelet
Van Cleef & Arpels Les Musiciens Clip
This Van Cleef & Arpels design captures the emblematic scene of the four lovable characters standing tall against a band of thieves. Sculpted in pink gold against the inky blue of lapis lazuli, diamonds sparkle as stars in the night sky. Set in an oval frame of diamonds, it pivots to reveal a hidden shimmering forest of yellow gold.
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GEMOLOGUE jewelry blog by Liza Urla is a celebration of fine, fashion and vintage jewellery featuring talented jewellery designers, trendy urban street style, exclusive interviews and rare jewellery reviews. This jewellery blog’s goal is to encourage and educate about jewellery online in a fresh and original fashion to inspire women and men across the globe in a fashion and travelling context.
Jewellery blogger, writer Liza Urla, the founder of GEMOLOGUE, is a London-based and NYC-educated gemologist, who has travelled to and lived in many countries. She is now one of the most influential digital jewellery tastemakers. Her jewellery influence has been acknowledged by Financial Times, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
*Photographed by Julia Flit. Styling and Art Direction by Liza Urla. All photos belong to GEM Kreatives for GEMOLOGUE.
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