Ninety years after the launch of Gabrielle Chanel’s first and only high jewellery range, Bijoux de Diamants, comes
the conception of the 1932 collection, which pays homage to the original ideals epitomised by its founder – a revolutionary spirit, the audacity of individualism, and freedom for womankind.
Three years after the Great Depression in Nov 1932, the London Diamond Corporation revealed that it’d turned to a woman to restore the diamond market to its former glory. She was a brilliant accessories designer, who applied the same design principles to clothes and whose costume jewellery had recently been lauded by international press as being more beautiful than the real thing. Head of a multi-faceted empire that was growing by the day, she was a woman of power and a friend of the arts and artists. This woman was none other than Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel.
Mademoiselle Coco chose the possibility of dreams and the vitality of beauty, creating Bijoux de Diamants, the world’s first high jewellery collection. So successful was the launch that it raised the Diamond Corporation’s shares in just two days, boosting an entire industry and revitalising the era.
Every detail for the Bijoux de Diamants presentation was planned by the designer doyenne. The jewels would be on display from Nov 7 to 19 in a first-of-its-kind exhibition. This was preceded by a two-day private viewing in her townhouse at 29 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré on Nov 5 – a symbolic number for Mademoiselle. Dotted around were glass cases on marble pedestals that were flooded with a mysterious light. Within them were wax mannequins made up and styled by the couturier herself. Their necks and hands were adorned with precious stones, whose brilliance was multiplied by cleverly placed mirrors that allowed the creations to be studied from every angle.
“Ninety-three million gemstones”, “eight billion facets”… Journalists vied with one another with outrageous statistics quoted in daily reports. This stirred resentment among other jewellers as there was no greater insult to them than the choice of a mere dressmaker as the rainmaker for the diamond market. Banding together to stop her from making jewellery, they demanded that the collection’s creations be disassembled and the stones returned. However, some sales had already been made on the opening day of the exhibition, with a few of the pieces surviving to this day to bear witness to the collection.
SINGULAR SENSATION
The jewels were unlike anything seen or made by the maisons of the time. An expression of a uniquely personal vocabulary of style, Mademoiselle Coco’s jewellery creations complemented her couture designs, which focused on the silhouette to create the all-important look. The perfection of the diamonds was enhanced by pristine simplicity. Unadorned with no visible setting and in classic cuts, the stones were perfectly balanced in size, creating a vision of extreme purity that would transcend time and the whims of fashion.
Applying the same modernist principles to her jewellery as she did her couture designs, Mademoiselle Coco introduced a new concept – that of establishing a new relationship between jewellery and the body. The Bijoux de Diamants collection eschewed trends and, as a result, revolutionised the industry. However, more than the first high collection the world had seen, the collection was always designed with the confident woman in mind.
Pieces could be transformed or positioned freely on the body to add the final touch to a look effortlessly. Women were at liberty to wear a feather with a crescent moon or fringes with a bow as they so pleased; to mix day and night by combining the sun with comets and the moon; or to transform a necklace into a trio of bracelets; or even detaching the motifs to wear as brooches.
There were no clasps either – an element Mademoiselle Coco detested – so that the woman’s movements were never impeded. These infinite possibilities in jewellery were never presented before, and their inventiveness was ground-breaking. The creative genius explained her designs: “My jewellery never stands in isolation from the idea of women and their dresses. It is because dresses change that my jewellery is transformable.”
Ravishing in its sumptuous opulence, the Bijoux de Diamants collection saw some 50 pieces, flaunting white and yellow diamonds set in platinum as well as yellow gold, created for daily wear. Among the creations that have been identified as part of this landmark collection, 22 evoked the sky and cosmos with comets, moons and suns. “I seek out the motifs that best showcase the brilliance of diamonds – the star, the cross, the fall of graduated stones and large sunburst cabochons,” she explained.
Mademoiselle also conjured up 17 optical illusions reproducing the suppleness of ribbons, dancing fringes and airy feathers, while a further eight pieces explored the graphic purity of spirals, circles, squares and crosses. Additionally, testimonies describe monumental brooches in the shape of the numbers 3, 5 and 7, but no trace of these has yet been found.
BEYOND SPACE AND TIME
Ninety years later, Chanel’s Jewelry Creation Studio draws inspiration from the modernity of Bijoux de Diamants to create a new story, aptly christened 1932. On retaining the celestial theme and pure lines, director of the Chanel Jewelry Creation Studio Patrice Leguéreau elaborates: “I wanted to return to the essence of 1932 and to harmonise the message around three symbols: the comet, the moon, and the sun. Every heavenly body shines with its own light.”
