On the occasion of the launch of the “TWEED DE CHANEL” High Jewelry collection in London, CHANEL hosted a gala dinner at the British Museum, in the presence of Ambassadors Keira Knightley and Lucy Boynton. The evening ended with a performance by singer-songwriter Kylie Minogue.
« For this new High Jewelry collection dedicated to Tweed, I wanted to go further in the interpretation by creating a veritable fabric of precious stones that is light and supple. » Patrice Leguéreau, Director of the CHANEL Fine Jewelry Creation Studio.
Inspiration has its landscapes. For Gabrielle Chanel, the gently rolling hills and valleys of Scotland, swept by wind and sun, filled with the murmur of natural springs and cloaked by night in velvety, star-studded blackness, were a whole new world. These were the landscapes she discovered in the 1920s, during her love affair with the Duke of Westminster, when the life of the English aristocracy was opened up to her. Mademoiselle borrowed the Duke’s tweed jackets and reinterpreted them in her collections. This warm, comfortable, woolly fabric, woven in countless different patterns by the Scots, was the softest armor to face the harshness of the Scottish climate.
Tweed owes its name to the River Tweed in the Scottish Borders. Gabrielle Chanel took it and made it her own, gifting its comfort to her elegant and sporty female clients. One of the most essential features in the CHANEL style vocabulary was born.
In 2020, tweed entered the world of CHANEL jewelry: a first collection of 45 exceptional pieces dedicated entirely to this fabric, reproducing its suppleness and subtleties through the skilful use of articulations. With ‘TWEED DE CHANEL », inspired by the richness of the tweed weaves and transforming tweed into a precious fabric, Patrice Leguéreau, Director of the CHANEL Fine Jewelry Creation Studio, opened up a new chapter in CHANEL High Jewelry.
In 2023, Patrice Leguéreau returns to the magic of tweed for a second time, with the audacious creation of 63 new High Jewelry pieces: « my dream was to create a tweed set with precious stones ».
Intricately crafted, embroidered, fringed, laced with openwork, playing on the refinements of monochromy or polychromy, reproducing the weave of the fabric with an abundance of details, creating an entrancing impression of movement… tweed reappears in its essence: as generous as it is precious.
This collection unveils five new tweed jewelry weaves, in five different colors and adorned with five icons dear to Gabrielle Chanel: the white ribbon, the pink camellia, the comet on a blue background, the yellow sun and the lion highlighted with flashes of red.
In five precious chapters, plastrons, necklaces and sautoirs, bracelets, brooches, rings and earrings re-create the charms of tweed, with each symbol represented either delicately within the clasp or present in full power on the piece.
The savoir-faire of the House’s jewelers showcases the materials of the new « TWEED DE CHANEL » Collection in settings that have been re-imagined in order to display the full beauty of the gemstones, using minuscule hinges, rings and articulations in gold and platinum threads that create suppleness into the structure of each creation. Airy and textured, the weave of the tweed is fringed and lightened; graphic and symmetrical, it is structured and enriched to create a veritable fabric of jewels. The interweaving of the gold, pearls and precious stones, the variety in the sizes of the stones, and the play of the openwork together re-create the fleecy, textured thickness of tweed. Its comfort and softness, meanwhile, are echoed in the work carried out specifically on the back of each piece.
These diamonds and precious stones of outstanding quality, the masterly skills and savoir-faire of the Fine Jewelry Creation workshop and its designs that transcend fashion give a creative freedom that goes beyond all bounds. A freedom that, through two High Jewelry collections, enables CHANEL to compose an ode to tweed. And to definitely declare it as a precious material.
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