High Jewelry 2021: Bvlgari, Boucheron, and Van Cleef & Arpels

Presented in Milan in June, Bvlgari’s “Magnifica” found inspiration in the beauty of the Eternal City, Rome, and from the house’s favored female muses. The collection saw rare gemstones collected from all over the world at the hand of Creative Director Lucia Silvestri to create 120 extravagant, one-of-a-kind wearable artworks. A few of our favorites included the multicolored Baroque Spiral necklace that looked to the work of 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi to inform its three-dimensional swirls of emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds; the sea-blue Mediterranean Queen necklace featuring 500 carats of oval cushion-cut Paraiba tourmaline; and the cascading Imperial Spinel necklace, dripping diamonds and emeralds accompanying the world’s fourth largest brilliant red spinel stone, weighing in at 131.21 carats.

Light itself was the muse for Boucheron’s new High Jewelry collection, “Holographique.” Considering the magical qualities of occurrences like rainbows and glistening sunbeams, the house’s Claire Choisne has created for the season 25 new pieces separated into nine suites, like Opalescence, Chromatique, Prisme, and Halo. Materials with an illusory quality—like opals, holographic ceramic, and rock crystal—were chosen to accompany precious stones like diamonds and colorful tourmaline, creating an angelic glow that captures the light surrounding the wearer. Playful and elegant designs we’re still thinking about include the opal, mother-of-pearl, and diamond Ondes earrings and necklace made from a web of hundreds of rounded stones, and the statement Holographique ring that center a 4.61 carat blue tourmaline surrounded by pave diamonds, white gold, and holographic rock crystal.

Van Cleef & Arpels returned to a constant inspiration for its latest High Jewelry debuts: the art of ballet. Looking to the beauty of the dancer’s form, the house introduced three new pieces, which join a larger, ongoing collection, “Dance Reflections.” Each imagined in white gold, the clips take the form of three dancers in motion, including one preparing to pirouette, imagined with a green skirt and glittering gold slippers, one featuring a ruby-and-diamond tutu, and one covered in diamonds with a subtle rose gold lining her skirt.