Chanel No5 100th Anniversary: Patrice Leguéreau Dreams Up A 55.55-Carat Diamond Necklace

In 1921, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel commissioned perfumer Ernest Beaux to create a signature scent. The couturier thought of the quantity 5 to be fortunate and, because the story goes, she consequently selected the fifth pattern of the perfume, deciding to call it No 5. A decade later, Mademoiselle (as she’s usually identified) launched her first and solely official jewelry assortment, named Bijoux de Diamants, at her house on Paris’s Rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Set with diamonds and sculpted utilizing platinum that was solid to form taking pictures stars and bows, many of the items have been later disassembled. A surviving brooch was ultimately recovered by Chanel, and it’s now a part of the home’s heritage assortment.
To have a good time No 5’s 100th anniversary, Patrice Leguéreau, director of Chanel’s nice jewelry creation studio, has introduced these two worlds along with Collection No 5, the primary excessive jewelry line to pay homage to a perfume. The 123-piece tribute assortment is impressed by No 5’s iconic bottle and, most notably, incorporates a magnificent necklace that showcases an infinite, 55.55-carat diamond.
Carved from a 170-carat tough stone to Leguéreau’s specs, the gem is a D Flawless, Type IIa diamond, which implies it’s as pure as potential—lower than two per cent of gem-quality diamonds are Type IIa. Mined in Lesotho, in Africa, the jewel took over a yr to form and polish earlier than it was mounted onto a custom-made bezel setting of 104 round- and 42 baguette-cut diamonds. Chanel plans to maintain the necklace at its newly renovated flagship boutique on Place Vendôme, which is the place Leguéreau video calls me from.
“The design course of was very pure,” he says concerning the necklace earlier than exhibiting me his preliminary sketches, dated greater than three years in the past. “I needed the gathering to have a masterpiece that may be set with a spectacular stone.”
The necklace was Leguéreau’s concluding No 5 design. “I knew precisely what I needed,” he says. “It needed to have figuring out parts of the No 5 fragrance, together with the stopper and bottle. It additionally wanted to evoke the perfume’s richness.” The emblematic scent is delivered to life utilizing pear-cut, amber- and powder-coloured stones together with citrine and imperial topaz.
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Leguéreau is easy—clearly, and immaculately turned-out. An hour into speaking to him, I can’t assist however proceed to note as a lot. When requested what qualities he shares with Chanel’s founder, he replies: “Her perfectionism”. He sits beside a marble desk suffering from tracing paper and pencils. “It’s at all times a problem to invent new territory on this planet of jewelry,” he says. Since becoming a member of Chanel in 2009, the creator has elevated his division’s use of the home’s signature motifs, together with its suns, ribbons and camellias. Last yr, designers labored on his Tweed de Chanel assortment, for which varied cuts of gems have been labored into treasured steel to mimic tweed’s irregular weave.
Taking inspiration from Chanel’s best-known fragrance was simple, says Leguéreau, however reworking it into jewelry was an unprecedented problem. “No 5 is greater than only a cloth; it’s an icon. I wasn’t very assured at first.”
The fragrance has been a world bestseller for many years and sits on thousands and thousands of dressing tables all over the world. “The thought was so sturdy and new; so massive and spectacular.” Leguéreau says he felt lots of strain. “I don’t know the best way to describe it. It made me form of shy. When I first began engaged on this assortment, I stored it very quiet.”
One individual he did speak in confidence to was Olivier Polge, Chanel’s perfumer, with whom Leguéreau may be very shut. During the jasmine harvest final August, Leguéreau travelled to Grasse to be taught extra about how Chanel’s traditional scent is produced. “I wanted to know what No 5 is as we speak.” Strong and reassuring, a spritz of this well-known fragrance is precisely what we’d like in these unsettling occasions. And a 55.55-carat diamond necklace doesn’t damage, both.
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About the Author: Jessica