Chanel Couture Jewelry Unveils The Coromandel Collection Inspired By Coco's Screens
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Whenever she moved her domicile, from the chic 16th Arrondissement to the Ritz Paris (and, later, Switzerland), Gabrielle Chanel took her Coromandel screens with her to “upholster” her home, writes Vogue. “I’m like a snail. I carry my house with me,” she once remarked to Claude Delay, her friend and biographer. Chanel's most beloved pieces, the ones she kept all her life and considered the doors to her private world, were the 17th- and 18th-century Coromandel folding screens she picked up in 1910 with her great love, Boy Capel. Today, these ornate, opulent black lacquer screens adorn the salons of private apartments at 31 Rue Cambon.
On Friday, Gabrielle Chanel's beloved Coromandel screens serve as the inspiration behind the brand's couture jewelry collection to be unveiled on the Place Vendôme in advance of the couture collections.
Semi-figurative floral “calligraphy,” stylized landscapes, Asian bestiaries, and even a small lacquer box are just some of the highlights in the Coromandel Collection, which debuts exclusively here. The important Horizon Lointain (“far horizon”) openwork choker reprises selected Coromandel motifs—clouds, mountains, camellias—in yellow gold, platinum, diamonds and mother-of-pearl. The Calligraphie Florale cuff is striking both for its composition in white gold, white and brownish diamonds, pink sapphires, black spinets, and tsavorite garnets as for its handling of negative space.
Meanwhile, the remarkable, articulated Recto Verso double-sided bracelet—panels of white and yellow gold and colored sapphires on one side; onyx and white and yellow diamonds and yellow sapphires on the other—is depicted here in gouache form because it will only just emerge from the workshops in time for the first client previews tomorrow.
