FRUITS of our EARTH

Nature, with all its splendours, is by no means a new source of creative inspiration. But this season's most outstanding high jewellery collections go a step further— interpreting the gifts of our world with eyes, craft and imagination anew.

- GORDON NG

Ikebana ARRANGEMENTS at BOUCHERON

Jewels are best seen on the body. But what if, Claire Choisne of Boucheron posits, they could be just as beautiful on a mantle? The frankly genius creative director of the Parisian high jewellery maison debuted a novel and groundbreaking collection this year that answers the question, and then some. In Carte Blanche: Impermanence, Boucheron rolls out six sets of high jewels, made of 28 pieces total, designed as finished, discrete ikebana compositions.

The creative and narrative impetus of the collection is an elegant but perhaps dire one. Choisne shared with Vogue Singapore via email that her desire was “to address a societal message by showcasing the disappearance of nature through a countdown”. Composition N°6 is wrought in pure white, bright and full, and consequently Composition N°1 is wreathed in black—Vantablack, in fact, which is the blackest substance in existence that absorbs 99.965 percent of visible light.

“I've sought to capture the beauty of nature before it vanishes,” she explains. “The collection is an ode to that fragile instant that I wanted to crystallise for eternity.” This tension between jewellery's enduring quality and the ephemeral nature of, well, life itself is not new to Choisne. In 2018, Boucheron created a line of immaculately preserved flower rings by stabilising actual petals and mounting them on titanium.