Boucheron’s Impermanence collection brings nature to life through multi-wear high jewellery pieces.
This year’s Carte Blanche High Jewellery collection from Boucheron, titled Impermanence, takes a close look at how fleeting the world around us is. Conceived by Creative Director Claire Choisne, the collection builds on her earlier explorations of nature’s fragility, most notably the 2018 Eternal Flowers. While January’s Histoire de Style: Untamed Nature paid tribute to Frédéric Boucheron’s vision, Impermanence is a more personal interpretation, drawing inspiration from Japanese philosophies of ikebana, the art of flower arranging, and wabi-sabi, an aesthetic which embraces imperfection and impermanence.
The collection is made up of six compositions, each representing a stage in the gradual fading of light. Starting with Composition No6, the brightest and ending with Composition No1, the darkest, the works symbolise nature’s cycle from vitality to disappearance. Across these six creations, 28 transformable jewellery pieces have been crafted, collectively requiring more than 18,000 hours of work.
Materials and techniques vary widely throughout the entire collection. Composition No6 captures the delicacy of a tulip and eucalyptus in borosilicate glass (a material rarely used at this level) alongside a dragonfly fashioned from sapphire glass, mother-of-pearl, white gold and diamonds. In Composition No5, thistles are rendered in plant-based resin via high-resolution 3D printing (an impressive feat in jewellery making), with 800 diamonds secured using a newly developed ‘couture’ setting technique. A rhinoceros beetle in white gold completes No5.
Composition No4 combines cyclamens and oats with nearly 700 rose-cut diamonds set into petals, alongside a caterpillar and butterfly in white gold, spinels and diamonds. In Composition No3, iris and wisteria flowers are modelled using titanium, ceramic and aluminium, with a stag beetle anchoring the piece. The fading of light is made more pronounced in Composition No2, where a magnolia branch appears skeletal, its form captured in aluminium and white gold, accompanied by a stick insect crafted in white gold and diamonds. Finally, Composition No1 takes the concept to its limit, where a poppy and sweet pea emerge from near-total darkness, with petals coated in Vantablack (a very dark material that absorbs almost all visible light). Black spinels, aventurine glass, onyx and titanium add further depth, while a butterfly with transparent black glass wings completes the composition.
Through Impermanence, tulips, thistles, cyclamens, magnolias, poppies and other motifs become brooches, rings, hair pieces or head jewels, letting the wearer style nature in a variety of forms.
For more information, please visit or call the boutique at Lagoona Mall, 4422 5536 and Villaggio Mall, 4433 5538.
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