Haute Couture 2025: Boucheron Explores Shades of Grey with the Impermanence High Jewellery Collection 

With its Carte Blanche High Jewellery collections, Boucheron's Creative Director Claire Choisne has the power to explore whatever fantastical avenue she pleases, which in 2025 centres on flowers and the natural world. The latest collection – Impermanence – is a continuation of the Histoire de Style Untamed Nature collection launched in January – blending floral blooms and insects in unique 'compositions' that cry out to be worn together as seamless works of wearable art. The stripped back colour palette, exclusively in shades of deep black, grey and white, adds to the collection's ephemeral beauty and made quite the statement at Paris Haute Couture Week. 

Normally, a high jewellery collection launch is all about natural light, which typically has the power to wake up diamonds and enhance the colour of precious gems. At Paris Haute Couture Week, Boucheron's presentation was purposefully dark and mysterious, providing the perfect platform for its remarkable Impermanence collection. It is themed around the idea of "making eternal that which is ephemeral," essentially freezing plants, flowers and insects in a pristine moment in time. Each 'composition' – a group of two to four pieces designed to be displayed together – follows a path of light, from the starkness of bright white to deepest black, when the natural cycle of life comes to an end. 

Through Impermanence, Claire Choisne is at her most indulgently creative, proposing pieces that are beautiful alone, meticulously conceived in small groups of complementary items, and supported by a rich back-story. Two key themes emerge from Japanese culture - Wabi Sabi 侘寂 and Ikebana 生け花 – which are related to the aesthetic and philosophical concept of impermanence and imperfection, and the Japanese art of flower arranging, respectively. We can see the latter in Choisne's 'compositions' that group two to four pieces into asymmetric, living (and almost breathing) arrangements of jewels that seem to celebrate a singular moment of calm in the natural world. These compositions are arranged from N°6, the lightest, to N°1, the darkest, to highlight "how nature is gradually vanishing", culminating in 28 pieces that collectively required more than 18,000 hours of craftsmanship. 

If only all the readers of KaterinaPerez.com could see the lookbook associated with this collection launch! At times, the font is such pale grey that one must concentrate to read the text against a white background. In the next instance, there are white-washed model images, slowly morphing into soft shades of grey, deep grey, and black with incredible levels of photographic contrast. As a storytelling tool, it is very impressive.

So, onto the jewels and Composition N°6, which is where Boucheron suggests we begin, when the light is starkest and brightest. Here, we find three pieces, Tulip, Eucalyptus and Dragonfly, each crafted in borosilicate glass, sapphire glass, mother of pearl, diamonds and white gold over 1,860 hours. Together, they are artfully placed in a glass vase with a black composite base, allowing them to be displayed like a free-standing miniature artwork. Separately, the eucalyptus becomes a brooch or hair jewel, the tulip transforms into a brooch, and the dragonfly can be suspended from the ear as an asymmetric adornment. 

Borosilicate glass is an interesting addition to this collection, chosen to convey the delicate beauty of eucalyptus leaves and tulip petals. It is more malleable than rock crystal and can be manipulated to have a matte or transparent finish. In these pieces, it is just two millimetres thick, infusing a lifelike realism into the plants' stems, veins and petals. Even the stamens encircling the tulip's pistil are mobile. Similar precision is visible in the Dragonfly earring, which features a millimetre-thick layer of sapphire glass atop mother of pearl to mirror the iridescence of dragonfly wings in nature. 

In Composition N°5, we are presented with two remarkable Thistles and a Rhinoceros Beetle brooch. The larger of the Thistles can be worn as a brooch, while the smaller piece can be detached and worn as a double-finger ring. All are crafted with a white ceramic coating over white gold and set with diamonds, requiring 2,880 hours of work. What's most incredible is the structure of the Thistle jewels, which are so lifelike that "one might expect to get pricked," according to Boucheron. They are rendered in a plant-based resin using ultra-high-resolution 3D printing technology – a first for the high jewellery world. The Maison explains: "While this technique enabled the creative studio to achieve an unrivalled and astonishingly lifelike degree of detail, it presented the artisans with a real challenge: without any metal structure, it would be impossible to set a single diamond into the blooms. This prompted them to push the limits of what was thought possible by devising a new technique called "couture" setting."

This method involves 'sewing' bezel-set diamonds into the cell-like cavities within the thistle shape. By the time Boucheron's craftspeople had finished, there were 600 individual diamonds in the larger Thistle brooch and more than 200 in the double-finger ring. The long stems, spikes, and leaves are all fashioned in white gold and coated in a thin layer of white ceramic. On the underside of the leaves, there's an openwork pattern to heighten the sparkle of diamonds. 

Composition N°4 introduces the striking colour contrast between rock crystal, white gold, diamonds, black spinels, black lacquer and titanium. There are four pieces, Cyclamen, Oat, Caterpillar and Butterfly, which can be arranged in a white gold vase paved with diamonds. The plant-inspired pieces, which appear to float on a gentle breeze, are the result of countless hours of meticulous stone setting. There are 700 rose-cut diamonds of different shapes and sizes in the Cyclamen's white gold petals, plus further round brilliant-cut diamonds, separated by threads of black lacquer. This piece is transformable, allowing it to be worn as a bracelet or a brooch thanks to a clever pivoting mechanism. 

In the Oat hair jewel, the stalk is made in black-coated titanium for lightness and decorated with sculpted spikelets, set with diamonds and decorated with black ceramic. To complete the scene, there is a Caterpillar brooch and a Butterfly hair jewel, both crafted in white gold with diamonds, black spinels and black lacquer. Incredibly, the Caterpillar brooch is crafted with brush-like fibres to mimic the texture of the living animal, as well as an articulated mechanism to allow its body to rise and fall in 'natural' motion. 

The final three compositions are the most daring due to their commanding size. Composition N°3 is composed of the Iris shoulder brooch, the Wisteria hair comb/brooch, and the Stag Beetle brooch, all containing combinations of diamonds, black spinel, white ceramic, aluminium, titanium, and white gold. Over 4,685 hours, Boucheron has created gravity-defying blooms with different finishes, including matte petals, glossy markings, sparkling diamonds, and ceramic linework. The Wisteria hair comb is my personal favourite, perhaps from the whole Impermanence collection, thanks to its incredible weightlessness (it's just 150 grams in total). It's crafted in white ceramic, titanium and aluminium with pavé-set diamonds for contrast. This is mirrored in the Stag Beetle brooch, which also boasts black titanium, bands of white gold, and pavé diamonds for a striking finish. 

Composition N°2 contains only two pieces, but neither should be underestimated. Magnolia is a head jewel or collar necklace with a detachable Stick Insect brooch, both requiring around 2,800 hours of work. The black anodised aluminium petals of the magnolia flowers stretch along a dramatic branch, crafted in shiny white aluminium, adorned with snow-set diamonds, inverse-set diamonds, rose-cut and brilliant-cut diamonds, surrounded by rhodium-plated white gold. To achieve such lifelike realism, the Boucheron team actually scanned a real magnolia, including its branches, flowers and buds, before proceeding with their ambitious horizontal design. 

Finally, there's Composition N°1, exclusively in shades of midnight black, with a Poppy headband or brooch, the Sweet Pea brooch(es), and the Butterfly shoulder brooch with a system of magnetic fasteners. All are crafted in aventurine, black glass, diamonds, black spinels, onyx and titanium and decorated with Vantablack® that absorbs 99.9% of visible light. This has a unique effect, essentially making the petals and blooms look eerily present and invisible all at once. It is something one needs to see in person to truly appreciate! As Boucheron explains: "The flowers bloom in a darkness that almost seems to coalesce into tangible form, as if black were becoming matter, curving along every contour and petal."

At the heart of the Poppy blossom are black spinels, some set face up and others upside down, that catch rare glimmers of light against the Vantablack® surroundings. A cluster of pistils is made from finely stretched white gold, tipped with spinels and bezel-set diamonds that are almost unbelievably tiny. As for the Sweet Pea, it gracefully unfurls in titanium and black spinels, with flowers sculpted from onyx and black aventurine glass. Finally, there's a ghostly Butterfly with a matte black titanium body, black spinels, and black glass wings with a translucent effect. No wonder some 2,004 hours of work were required.  

What's most notable about the Impermanence High Jewellery collection is its lack of any 'traditional' jewellery – there is one ring, a single transformable bracelet, an asymmetric earring, but the rest are body jewels, hair jewels, brooches, adornments, and art pieces. Is this collection designed to be wearable? Perhaps not, and yet that hardly seems like the point. Here we see an elevation of high jewellery into displayable, covetable art that could be admired on a desk or worn on the body. For the most seasoned of collectors, this represents an opportunity to purchase something delicate and innovative. Something to treasure, forever, even after the real-world blooms have lost their lustre. These Boucheron pieces are eternal.