Haute Joaillerie “Les Blés de Chanel”
As far back as Gabrielle Chanel could remember, from her childhood onwards, she always had fond memories of wheat.
Coincidentally her date of birth on August 19th coincides with the harvest festival. This celebration held at the end of the summer was the symbol of renewed prosperity and abundance because the harvests were plentiful and the granaries were full.
In May, the new seedlings sprout from the ground, tender and green. In June, when the temperature becomes warmer, the ears of wheat begin to form. July and August sees them basking in the sun, their smell and fragrance fill the countryside on Summer’s evening. Everyone knows that the crop is then ready to be harvested.
For Gabrielle Chanel’s Father wheat symbolised all that was good and wholesome. How many times as a child had she heard him call it «my good wheat»? This expression resounded with her all her life. And this «good wheat» never left her, turning it into one of her lucky charms.
Real, in wood, bronze or in a painting by her friend Dalí, wheat was present in all its forms in her apartment at rue Cambon, in her suite at the Ritz or in her home in La Pausa.
The High Jewellery collection «Les Blés de Chanel» celebrates for the rst time this fundamental element of Gabrielle Chanel’s world, this eternal symbol of regeneration, abundance, luck, prosperity and endless creativity. The collection follows the life cycle of wheat, and these 62 high jewellery pieces in all their softness appear like a wheat eld moving in the breeze.
«Premiers Brins», «Brins de Printemps» and «Brins de Diamants» pay homage to the tender young wheat shoots of early spring. Diamonds, peridots, crystalline and aquamarines play with transparency like young stalks of wheat.
The harvest is evoked through the variations of «Moisson Ensoleillée», «Bouquet de Moisson» and «Moisson de Perles” where diamonds, yellow sapphires and pearls bask in the golden warmth of a Summer’s sun.
«Moisson d’Or» offers a sheath of wheat tied by a yellow sapphire of 16.8 carats. This spray of diamonds and sapphires is the central motif of a long necklace made of 977 yellow sapphires for a total weight of 477.5 carats.
The same inspiration can be found on a brooch, earings and a ring whose centre stone is a yellow cushion sapphire of 17.1 carats.
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