How high jewellery designers fell for retro culture: from Coco Chanel’s 30s Jazz Age collection, to Tiffany & Co. and Piaget’s love for the 70s disco era, and Boucheron and Stephen Webster embracing the 80s

Dec 28 , 2023

How high jewellery designers are being inspired by retro culture: from Coco Chanel’s 30s Jazz Age collection, to Tiffany & Co. and Piaget drawing on the 70s, and Boucheron and Stephen Webster the 80s. Pictured: Boucheron More Is More, This Is Not a Ring. Photos: Handout

Fashion typically operates in 20-year cycles. That’s why, in the 1990s, Tom Ford was so successful with reviving disco style, and why, in the present day, we’re seeing a renaissance of trends from the Y2K era of the early 2000s – think glitzy minidresses, low-rise boot-cut denim, and midriff-bearing crop-tops.

Things move a little more slowly in the world of jewellery. In this rarefied realm, the retro focus is just now beginning to fall on the 1980s – at least, if the latest collection from Boucheron is anything to go by. Entitled More is More, this new array of bijoux from creative director Claire Choisne draws its primary inspiration from revolutionary Milanese design collective The Memphis Group.

Boucheron More Is More collection, In The Pocket and An Apple a Day bracelet

Led by Ettore Sottsass, and most active from 1980 to 1987, Memphis trafficked in bold, postmodern designs featuring jagged shapes, and bright and often jarring colours – Bauhaus with a dash of MTV – and a poppy aesthetic akin to the surf and skate style of the day.

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For the More is More collection, Choisne riffed on these motifs and 1980s cultural touch points such as the Rubik’s Cube (which inspires a bejewelled necklace), the badges affixed to denim jackets by New Wave teens (reworked into precious brooches), and plastic hair bobbles (transformed into funky lacquer, titanium and white-gold rings).

Patrice Leguéreau embarked on the challenging feat of rendering tweed into jewellery form for the Tweed de Chanel collection

She has also created a daring magnesium and diamond hair bow that resembles the large-scale 80s pop art sculptures of Roy Lichtenstein, and a gem-encrusted, fully functional pocket in 3D-printed titanium that can be attached magnetically to almost any item of attire. Another piece intended to elevate an otherwise everyday garment is Choisne’s hoodie string adornment (also functional as earrings), in a rainbow of materials including diamonds, lacquer, onyx, opal, gold and titanium.

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Speaking to the Post, Choisne said of the 165-year-old Parisian maison she helms creatively: “We’re the oldest and first jeweller on Place Vendôme – but we’re a fun grandmother.

“We’re old so we’re not afraid to try new things, and it’s not that because they’re expensive pieces, they should be boring. Fashion is cool so high jewellery should be too.”

Another jeweller currently casting their eyes back to the 1980s is Britain’s Stephen Webster. Known as a rock star of the UK jewellery scene, Webster has seen his creations adorn a host of musicians including Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Cher, Pink, Madonna and Sir Elton John.

Chanel An ode to the celestial theme that defined its first high jewellery range in 1932, the Soleil 19 Août necklace is set in white and yellow gold with a 22.1-carat cushion-cut yellow diamond, surrounded by brilliant white diamonds

The designer says his recent Thorn Embrace collection channels the spirit of the New Romantic movement. This reference is displayed most clearly “with the addition of a magnetic combination of two pear shapes coming together, perfectly signifying a completed heart”, according to Webster.

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With all pieces made from 18k recycled gold, Thorn Embrace features a broad and colourful variety of gemstones, with an emphasis on the pear-shape cut. Earrings, rings, bracelets and chokers are adorned with diamonds, emeralds, spinels, tanzanites, tourmalines and garnets.

Boucheron More is More collection, Tie The Knot brooch hair jewel

Peering beyond the 1980s into the 70s, jeweller and watchmaker Piaget is today seeking inspiration in the creations of that time.

“We call ourselves a maison of extravaganza – extravagant elegance,” says Fatemeh Laleh, Piaget’s international communication and image director. “We were always different. There was always something very natural about having a twist in everything that we do.”

An extravagant necklace from Chanel’s Tweed de Chanel high jewellery collection

When Laleh first went to work at the brand, she says, “I learned a lot about Piaget. I dove into the history, the heritage.” One thing that became apparent during these explorations – especially when examining archival materials and pieces from the 1970s – was Piaget’s upbeat mood.

“There was this optimism that really struck me as something that differentiated us,” she says. Looking at the Piaget of the 1970s, she explains, “There was this very vibrant, colourful approach” – with a bold use of eye-catching hues and exotic materials.

Boucheron More is More, In the Pocket and An Apple A Day

“The gem setting, the way we work with colour – I think it went beyond flamboyance. There was a decadence to the creations, a provocation – that’s really what I saw when I went into the archives.” It’s this mood that Laleh is striving to revitalise within the brand, and by extension, its watches and jewellery.

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The spirit of the 70s has never left Tiffany & Co., where the designs created during that glamorous period by Italian former model Elsa Peretti have remained perennial bestsellers ever since their disco-era inception. Peretti was signed up as a designer by the iconic New York jeweller in 1974, and swiftly set about manifesting a series of seminal pieces that look just as fresh today as they did almost 50 years ago.

Necklace from Tweed de Chanel high jewellery collection

Her most enduring creations include the Open Bottle pendant (inspired by a vase Peretti picked up at a flea market), Diamonds by the Yard (a string of stones intended to make gems more casual and insouciant), the curvaceous Bean and Open Heart pendants, and the innovative wrist-shaped Bone cuff (which debuted at a 1970s fashion show by Peretti’s great friend and long-time collaborator, Halston).

Jumping back several more decades, jewellery maisons continue to be intrigued by the art deco style of a century ago. Super-modern during its 1920s and 30s heyday, art deco represented a dramatic departure from the ornate, florid excesses of the preceding art nouveau era. Though the movement initially shocked traditionalists, deco’s streamlined, symmetrical, geometric aesthetic – relying heavily on a palette of polished chrome, black and white – has gone on to become a timelessly classic look.

Bracelet from Tweed de Chanel high jewellery collection

Coco Chanel presented the only high jewellery collection of her lifetime in 1932, and unsurprisingly, given the year of its launch, the designs channelled (if you’ll forgive the pun) the art deco style dominant at the time. These Jazz Age creations inspired the “1932” collection of haute joaillerie launched by Chanel recently, while the menswear-influenced garments Coco began producing in collaboration with a Scottish mill in 1924 form the basis of the 64-piece Tweed de Chanel collection unveiled earlier this year.

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Perhaps no other jeweller is as associated with art deco as Cartier. With its gorgeously sleek shapes, modern lines and exotic multicultural inspirations, the jewellery and watches Cartier produced in the 1920s and 30s not only embodied art deco, they played a major role in defining the style.

Boucheron More is More This Is Not a Ring

In fact, the movement takes its name from the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, where Cartier’s jewellery was a highlight. Anyone seeking a contemporary take on the retro style of a century ago would do well to peruse the showcases at Cartier, where deco lives on in gems, precious metals and – in signature deco timepiece, the Tank – the suitably modern material of stainless steel.

Special Report - Jewellery

Going 1980s retro, high jewellery maison Boucheron references the Rubik’s Cube, New Wave and Milanese design collective The Memphis Group, while Stephen Webster channels the New Romantic movement
Tiffany & Co. and Piaget are drawing inspiration from the decadence and vibrancy of the 70s, while Chanel is looking all the way back to the Jazz Age with its ‘1932’ collection of haute joaillerie