Boucheron's High Jewellery Is Out of This World

Who would have guessed a lack of freedom could, ironically, birth works of such unbridled ingenuity? Boucheron’s latest high jewellery collection, Carte Blanche — Ailleurs, represents a mental odyssey through unknown terrain, made up of distinct worlds that are unlike our own, yet hauntingly familiar.

In response to lockdowns curtailing movement and autonomy, Boucheron Creative Director Claire Choisne sought to channel that yearning for travel into the Maison’s high jewellery launch for this season. Named after the French word meaning “elsewhere,” the transportive collection conveys through its various parures a deep longing to connect with the natural world and far-flung locales, where landscapes are pristine and unaltered. So strong was this inspiration that Ailleurs began not with jewellery designs or available gemstones, but with moodboards that communicate the atmosphere, emotions and colours dominating each of five environments that make up this imaginary universe.

Choisne designed one parure to complement a hypothetical inhabitant of each world: The Sand Woman set calls to mind an arid landscape and features blonde hues, rattan and Fusinus colus shells; the Leaf Woman set evokes a rainforest with its lush palette of green and orange, bird of paradise and Ideopsis vulgaris butterflies; the Earth Woman set is defined by geology, Santos rosewood and Conus marmoreus shells; the Pebble Woman set is dominated by ethereal shades of white and grey, and smooth rocks studded with diamonds; and the Volcano Man set is marked by a stark monochrome, meteorite, and 3,000-year-old marsh oak wood treated through charring.

A celebration of nature’s beauty and immense possibilities, Ailleurs spotlights the potential that common materials have in high jewellery. In particular, the collection employs a number of materials of organic origin directly, instead of emulating them with precious metals and gemstones. “We are used to working with diamonds and gold in high jewellery, but for me, raw materials can be as wonderful,” Choisne says. “They bring emotions, and memories as well, so for me they are as precious as diamonds and [metals]. So I didn’t want to mimic them — I wanted to highlight them, show them and really use them in the collection.”

Materials like rattan and wood may be more often seen in furniture and decor, but in Ailleurs they have pride of place in key pieces, such as the transformable Rotin Diamant necklace and the Bois Diamant brooch, challenging the notion of what qualifies as high jewellery. To Choisne, this question has been on her mind for a long time. “But I don’t know if I have the answer,” she admits. “For me, of course high jewellery must have wonderful craftsmanship and wonderful pieces, stones and everything, but I think it should bring something more in terms of emotion — these are one-of-a-kind pieces and quite exceptional, and I think they are even more exceptional if they bring emotion to people who look at them.”

For all its otherworldly qualities, Ailleurs follows a series of extraordinary creations from Boucheron that defy conventional ideas of jewellery while staying faithful to the codes set in motion when Frédéric Boucheron founded the Maison in 1858. From the first Question Mark necklace, an asymmetric clasp-free design unveiled in 1879, to 2021’s Holographique high jewellery collection, a futuristic take on the interplay between light and colour, the Maison has endeavoured to marry innovation with beauty and wonder.

“[Frédéric Boucheron] created new techniques like the Question Mark necklace — it’s so smart, so brilliant, and at that time, it didn’t exist, so he was technically quite a visionary. And he made high jewellery pieces with rock crystal and diamonds, but during his time, it was crazy to make this kind of pairing, so he was an innovative person with quite a bold mind,” Choisne says.

“We try to keep this philosophy in mind and continue his legacy. Of course today we have more technical possibilities and new materials, but I hope that the philosophy we use today is honest with the philosophy that he had.”