【Paris, Franc】From Record-Setting Stones To Kaleidoscopic Colour: What Couture Week Tells Us About Summer Jewellery Trends

Puffer Fish, Record-Setting Stones And Kaleidoscopic Colour: What Couture Week Tells Us About Summer Jewellery Trends
Read on for more highlights from the high jewellery presentations at Paris Haute Couture Week.
Animal motifs have long inspired high jewellery – like the French maison unveiled its largest high jewellery collection to date, an astonishing 90-piece collection which celebrated the equine history of the house. Cue imaginative and humorous pieces inspired by hooves, stirrups and lassos, including a sautoir strung with horseshoes, accented with black jade and brown moonstone studs.
Milanese jeweller Pomellato also drew on its horsey heritage (the brand is named after the Italian word for a dappled horse), with a chain necklace inspired by a seventies design, strung with a horse cameo pendant, honed from white shell. Cartier nodded to its animalistic origins, with Panthère motif rings and brooches, imagined in with onyx and obsidian, and introduced a dragon’s head cuff crafted from black jasper. At Graff, the London jeweller showcased its most significant high jewellery collection to date, with 12 signature butterfly brooches. Each jabot pin represented a different artistic period, from Art Deco to Optical Art, crafted in black spinels.

Amongst tiaras and sautoirs, secret watches and collars, one piece literally had us seeing double. The two finger ring emerged as the standout silhouette of Paris Couture Week, seen in twists of pavé diamond-set rose gold inspired by horse bits at Hermès, pear-shape diamonds appearing to float on the fingers at Repossi, plus lacquer-swathed gems at Chanel and Dior Haute Joaillerie. Haute couture clients are hardly concerned with 2-for-1 jewels, but like the transformable pieces that pepper high jewellery collections (like necklaces that become tiaras, brooches and bracelets), there is clear bang for your buck in a double design!
Gabrielle Chanel was captivated by colour in jewellery, whether it was costume pieces, or the one and only high jewellery collection she designed. The house’s, talismanic Signes and Symboles high jewellery collection offered the strongest reflection of this interest to date, with pieces accented with bright lacquer, sunshine-hued yellow gold and coloured gemstones. The Talisman Gabrielle series, features diamond-swathed symbols of the house – stars, comets, lion’s heads, camellias – set against slabs of turquoise, chrysoprase, carnelian and onyx, while the Symbole Ombré Necklace boasts strings of spessartite garnet beads, suspended between two turquoise and diamond stars.
By Laura Hawkins
13 July 2026

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Had you walked past Restaurant La Gratin in Paris late at night last Tuesday, you’d have seen a huge inflatable puffer fish ascending over Alexa Chung and Dree Hemingway, while waiters poured champagne over ice. The shimmering aquatic blimp celebrated the launch of Pandora Wonders, the Danish jeweller’s latest activation, which has seen Harry Styles’s longtime stylist Harry Lambert collaborate with the brand on freshwater baroque pearl charms imagined in eclectic shapes, from giant frogs to ice creams, mice to mushrooms.
Every Star On The Front Row At Couture Week
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If you’re thinking that it’s pretty intriguing for credit card-friendly Pandora to host an activation during Paris Couture Week – a week hotfooted to by the world’s richest shoppers, where centuries old-craftsmanship is celebrated in gilded salons – you’d be right! The brand certainly got editors talking as clients noted down their personal orders at Chanel’s Jack And The Beanstalk-inspired fairytale and Dior’s radical take on the “femme fleur” and ogled at priceless jewels, dotted around the Place Vendôme.

Etriers Necklace, by Hermès.
Julien Martinez Leclerc
Athea brooch, by Graff.
Cartier’s signature panther and Chaumet’s buzzing bee – and they’ve also crawled onto the autumn/winter 2026 haute couture catwalks, from Dior’s armadillo minaudière, to hen-shape handbags at Chanel. At Hermès pearls, Paraíba tourmalines and pink sapphires.

Riviera Necklace, by David Morris.
Legendary Bird: The Sapphire Edition, by Tiffany & Co.

Couture week is a moment for high jewellers to bring out the big guns in terms of high carats, megawatt pieces and huge collections (Van Cleef & Arpels’s Fascinating Egypt offering, initially debuted in June and featured in British Vogue’s July 2026 issue totalled 180 pieces). Back in January, David Morris showed off a cocktail ring set with the largest freshwater pearl in the world, and the London jeweller did not disappoint this July, presenting the Riviera necklace – which boasts a jaw-dropping 184.15-carat step cut unheated Sri Lankan sapphire pendant – as part of its Legacy of Colour II collection.
At Messika, Valérie Messika unveiled a collection inspired by the natural landscapes of Botswana from ruby-hued sunsets to meandering lagoons, featuring a diamond-swathed necklace, set with a megawatt 20.46-carat Okavango Blue diamond. At Tiffany & Co., the New York jeweller unveiled Legendary Bird: The Sapphire Edition, an evolution of its iconic Jean Schlumberger-inaugurated Bird on a Rock brooch series, featuring two mother of pearl and diamond birds hovering over slices of black opal and a central 34.48-carat blue sapphire. At De Beers.