Why Louis Vuitton's high jewellery is fit for an empress
The emblems and insignia of royalty, aka regalia, are the threads that run through Louis Vuitton's latest high-jewellery collection of the same name.
Distilling two of the house's motifs - the V and the stylised four-petal flower - down to their most basic form, the designs are no longer overtly logo-inspired, as in previous years, but are subtly interwoven into the collection's 60 pieces.
V-shapes are multiplied and fanned out like diamond plumes, while the outline of a flower is softened and warped, even opened up, until it becomes a distinctly art-deco-esque geometric motif. But what is truly regal about the collection is the enormous coloured gemstones that anchor the pieces.
White-gold, tsavorite-garnet and diamond necklace, and white-gold, red-spinel and diamond necklace, price on application, Louis Vuitton
Here, a huge, oval-cut tsavorite garnet of over 16 carats hangs from its diamond necklace, a criss-crossed series of V-shapes and lines that appear to be almost woven like wicker. And beside it, a gloriously pinkish-red, pear-cut spinel queens it in a diamond throne, the head of a wide necklace of undulating diamond-set loops, softly graduating in size and layered, like feathers, over each other.
Elsewhere, a gobstopper-sized mint-green Paraíba tourmaline plays the sovereign, while a lavender-blue sapphire is the jewel in the crown of a long diamond necklace. Pomp and ceremony aside, these pieces really are fit for an empress.
Soft touch
Green jade, pink opal and mother-of-pearl - what could these hard materials possibly have to do with nests? In Brazilian jeweller Fernando Jorge's eyes, they're the perfect homes for diamonds to sink into, as softly and naturally as a head on a pillow.
18ct-yellow-gold, mother-of-pearl and diamond satellite earrings, ￡154,320, Fernando Jorge
The latest collection from the award-winning designer - a Central Saint Martins alumnus - is Surround, which takes this notion and riffs on it with pieces as subtle as a simple ring sporting a single diamond in its hardstone home, to ingeniously measured, firework earrings that seemingly burst from the earlobe.
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