Fabric Finery: Presenting the Tweed de Chanel High Jewellery Collection
For its latest high jewellery collection, French fashion house Chanel has transformed the textural checks of traditional tweed fabrics into chessboard patterns of precious gems. Its aptly named Tweed de Chanel High Jewellery offering features five chapters, each one dedicated to a ‘weave’ and adorned with iconic symbols of the House, including camellia blooms, ribbons and comets. Let’s explore these jewellery stories and see what pieces the brand has in store for us…
We know that Gabrielle Chanel had a passion for Venice (note the Chanel Escale à Venise High jewellery collection of 2021), but her interest in Scotland’s rolling hills and valleys is perhaps a lesser-known inspiration. During an affair with the Duke of Westminster in the 1920s, Chanel spent her time as an aristocrat, encountering green landscapes and Scottish tweeds in abundance. She interpreted these traditional fabrics in her collections, and today, tweed is one of the fashion giant’s most significant materials.
Tweed concept artwork for the Tweed de Chanel High Jewellery Collection of 2023
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 made its first foray into the world of Chanel jewellery thanks to a 45-piece collection. Today, the concept is back with 63 new High Jewellery pieces dedicated to the “magic of tweed” and set with diamonds and coloured gemstones. Of course, we have Patrice Leguéreau, Director of the Chanel Fine Jewellery Creation Studio, to thank for this! His creations interpret hand-crafted supple yarns, embroidery, fringing and checkerboard patterns and play on the idea of monochromatic and polychromatic weaves to create the impression of depth and movement. Elsewhere, there are lace-like openwork structures and flashes of iconic Chanel motifs: the lion’s head, camellia flowers, white ribbons, fiery comments and vibrant yellow suns.
For this new High Jewellery 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 Jewellery Creation Studio.
Tweed de Chanel is split into five chapters, each dedicated to its own ‘weave’: Soleil, Lion, Étoile, Ruban and Camélia. Among them are plastrons, necklaces, sautoirs, bracelets, brooches, rings and earrings in named sets. There’s also a stand-out necklace – the Tweed Royal – that is explained below. Before I dive into each chapter, the craftsmanship on display here is worth mentioning. Miniature and minuscule hinges, rings and articulations in gold and platinum threads add suppleness to the materials, allowing them to behave more like fabrics. The brand explains: “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.”
Actress Keira Knightley in the Chanel Tweed Mademoiselle necklace in white gold and diamonds, including an oval-cut diamond of 5.01 carats, from the Tweed Ruban set of the Tweed de Chanel High Jewellery Collection.
Tweed Soleil
The sun has long been a motif in the Chanel universe, and the presence of vibrant yellow gemstones is almost to be expected in its high jewels. Here, we see the collision of tweed and “Byzantine and Venetian magnificence” in three sets: Tweed Cambon, Tweed Byzance, and Tweet Soliare. There’s also a Tweed Icône ring of note (a signature piece of each set in the Tweed de Chanel collection). A pair of Cambon earrings combine building blocks of diamonds, set in yellow gold, with sun rays of diamonds in platinum, leading to kite-shaped rock crystal drops. In Tweed Byzance, we find a brooch, ring, bracelet and earrings with intoxicating, mixed-cut yellow beryls and bezel-set round brilliant-cut diamonds in woven patterns. Another highlight in Tweed Solaire is a brilliant Imperial topaz choker and matching ring with further yellow beryls and diamonds.
WORDS
Sarah Jordan Starting her career as a journalist, Sarah discovered the world of fine jewellery in 2014 when she began working as a magazine editor for a jewellery retail magazine in London. Since going freelance, Sarah has specialised in content writing, editing and branded storytelling for a range of businesses, including De Beers Jewellery, Sotheby’s, the Natural Diamond Council and Gem-A (Gemmological Association of Great Britain). She is also the founder of her own specialist copywriting business, The William Agency. Sarah has completed courses at both De Beers Group Institute of Diamonds and the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), and is well-versed in the language of high jewellery and the history of jewellery design movements. She has known Katerina for many years and shares her vision of helping even more women fall in love with fine jewellery… one gemstone at a time!
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