STARLIT REVERIE

Reach for the Stars combines Chanel's long-established comet and lion emblems with a new wing motif, shaping high jewellery inspired by movement and light.

- By CANDICE CHAN

Jewellery has never been merely decorative. For millennia, it has conferred rank, declared affection, and guarded against the unseen—the weight of a crown, a posy ring engraved with a vow, the comfort of an amulet. Gabrielle Chanel knew this. Famously superstitious, she trusted signs: the lion, the camellia, the stars and wheat, and the talismanic number five.

Reach for the Stars, the house's newest collection, extends that private language, highlighting two emblems and introducing a new one: wings. It also represents a decisive turning point in Gabrielle's life. In 1931, she travelled to Hollywood to design outfits for film stars, championing streamlined glamour over studio spectacle. The experience sharpened her ideas about movement and light—ideas she later framed in a powerful quote: “If you're born without wings, don't do anything to stop them growing.”

For Chanel, the new emblem represents freedom, ambition, and ancestry, while Reach for the Stars formalises the symbol alongside the lion and the comet, translating its flight into plumed lines, openwork collars, and radiant settings.

This formalisation is also a farewell. Reach for the Stars is the last high jewellery collection designed and completed by the late Patrice Leguéreau, who led Chanel's Jewelry Creation Studio for 15 years. Unveiled in Kyoto, it fulfils his wish to present in Japan and quietly honours his vision.

As a bright contrast to Leguéreau’s elegiac tribute, the collection offers chapters on the comet, the wing, and the lion, each comprising sets with buoyant titles such as Dreams Come True and Rise and Shine.

SHOOTING STARS