Editor’s Note
The entry of major fashion houses into the high jewelry sector is reshaping the luxury landscape, blending couture creativity with traditional craftsmanship. This shift, while innovative, is not without its tensions, as explored in our feature on this new frontier.
The high jewelry sector, the new frontier of luxury, is increasingly attracting fashion houses, which are creatively seizing a domain once reserved for traditional jewelers. This has not been without causing some friction.
The name was not chosen at random. This autumn, Miuccia Prada unveiled “Couleur Vivante,” a jewelry collection for her eponymous house celebrating fine stones with shimmering hues. Amethysts, aquamarines, madeira citrines, pink morganites, peridots… The palette is sumptuous, contrasting with the clean lines of the jewelry, true to the Italian brand’s grammar. This is Prada’s second jewelry venture, following “Eternal Gold” launched in 2022 with its 100% gold. At the time, this luxury ready-to-wear giant took on the challenge of carving a place for itself in the world of jewelry. Since then, other fashion houses have followed this path, such as Saint Laurent under the impetus of its artistic director Anthony Vaccarello in 2023, and, more recently, Bottega Veneta.
Jewelry, with a noticeable acceleration in recent years, has become the ultimate frontier for the luxury industry. In 2024, while the market for personal luxury goods stagnated, the jewelry sector was one of the few sub-segments to have “held up better,” according to a study by consultancy Bain & Company. For example, the Richemont conglomerate reported jewelry sales of €15.3 billion for the fiscal year ending March 2025 – achieving 8% growth – thanks to its brands including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Buccellati. At Kering (Gucci, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta…), jewelry is the most resilient axis: its revenues have quadrupled in ten years, as reported by the Financial Times.
This is no surprise to industry observers. In 2021, McKinsey projected an annual growth of 3 to 4% for the fine jewelry market until 2025. These predictions explain the fashion houses’ appetite for creations in precious stones and metals.
Benjamin Comar, who long headed Chanel’s jewelry division before taking the helm at Repossi and then Piaget, views this trend pragmatically.
While this is indeed a significant underlying trend, an iron curtain has historically separated couture houses and jewelry houses. Gabrielle Chanel herself experienced this in 1932 during the presentation of her only collection of jewelry set with precious stones, created with designer Paul Iribe for the needs of the International Diamond Corporation. This Anglo-Saxon diamond syndicate had called upon the designer to highlight the brilliance of diamonds, whose sales had collapsed since the 1929 crash. Gabrielle Chanel delivered a constellation of gems illuminating unique, lightweight, and transformable pieces in the shape of stars or comet tails. Jewelry was becoming a decorative art as prestigious as others.
The collection, presented at a public exhibition, captivated fashionable Paris.
It also sparked the anger of the Place Vendôme, as evidenced by an open letter published in the newspaper L’Intransigeant in October 1932. This public document, issued by the High Jewelry Syndical Chamber, is perhaps the most vindictive communiqué in the contemporary history of Parisian luxury. Messrs. Chaumet, Mellerio, Fouquet, and many others expressed having learned “with the utmost indignation” of the initiative to entrust “Madame Gabrielle Chanel, dressmaker,” with the design and creation of a diamond jewelry collection. They spoke of a decision “surprising, unjustified, damaging to the honor and secular tradition” of their profession. The charge also mentioned that “entrusting this noble task to a personality from the world of clothing constitutes an insult to all French jewelers who have made Paris the world capital of diamonds.” No less! To remedy the harm caused by what they considered “hazardous experiments and ephemeral fancies,” they demanded the complete dismantling of the exhibited pieces, under expert supervision, and a public acknowledgment of the error committed. Needless to say, the designer did not comply. Nevertheless, she never ventured into the realm of precious stones again.
