Ice ice baby: The 5 most breathtaking haute joaillerie necklaces

After a year of no bras, it is literally time to strut again – and nothing makes a person stand taller than a superlative necklace. High jewellery has decidedly turned maximalist as a category, and this year’s crop is as colourful as it is brimming with visual power. Whether it be a goldsmith construction tour-de-force from Cartier in France, a gemstone match made in Heaven (or in this case the Mediterranean at Bulgari), classic red carpet glamour from Chopard in Switzerland, a branding roar celebrating a century of the iconic perfume Chanel No. 5, or an American heritage of gemmology from Tiffany & Co., the results are breathtaking and utterly flamboyant.

For the past year-and-a-half, the jewellery giants have been busy behind the scenes, each with their iconic aesthetic – but all share a love of sinuous lines, voluptuous shapes, and intricate complexity. Encompassing brand heritages, nature’s abundance and crafted excellence, Bulgari, Cartier, Chanel, Chopard and Tiffany & Co. have outdone themselves. When it comes to investment, necklaces – as per usual – hold all the focus because of their position as the most significant pieces from collections, set with the most important, largest and costly gemstones.

So, whether you contemplate acquiring an investment piece or just appreciate the sheer joy of gems, necklaces make up the emblems of design themes, figuratively as much as abstractly. These necklaces go way beyond any exercises in style and symbolism – they exemplify the spirit of the houses, as the most exceptional pieces of jewellery.

Superlative jewellery – haute joaillerie as it is known in French, high jewellery as it is named in English – is all about gems set in inspired designs. In a celebration of beauty, high jewellery has a bold approach to life: being all about vibrant colours, fanciful shapes and exquisite details, the necklaces convey a sense of joy and positivity – coming alive again after a lacklustre year.

What has nature had to offer in gemstones? This year’s cream of the crop is nothing short of spectacular. Thanks to the gorgeous gems, high jewellery displays a particular volume. The visual expression is all about strength communicated through colour. A desire for conspicuousness continues to sum up the attitude of high jewellery. Harmony, grace and beauty stand out in the one-of-a-kind pieces, with their vivacious hues in a powerful kaleidoscope, cementing unlimited commitments to beauty. The virtuoso use of colour is a sure signature of these creations.

In this year’s Blue Book collection entitled Colours of Nature, Tiffany & Co. has ventured out on a kaleidoscopic journey through nature’s vivid chromatic displays. The collection has given form to lush botanicals in the shape of vibrant gemstones with a curated palette of gemstone varieties that include the house’s legacy gemstones - tanzanite and kunzite – which Tiffany proudly introduced to the world in the course of the 20th century. The then-president Henry Platt even named the blue variety of zoisite tanzanite to commemorate the fact that the gems were found in Tanzania. Before him, the company’s first chief gemmologist, G.F. Kunz, played a significant part in naming pink beryl morganite after the banker, gemstone collector and philanthropist J.P. Morgan.

Today, Victoria Reynolds, Chief Gemmologist at Tiffany & Co., says: “Tanzanite and morganite are truly legacy gemstones of ours, and we felt the multiple gemstone necklace was the ideal piece to showcase the breadth of stones in our reper toire. As one of my favourite pieces in this collection, it features aquamarines, tanzanites, pink, orange and green tourmalines, a rubellite, and a morganite – more than 278 carats of coloured gemstones in a soft, yet striking painterly palette”.

The Earth necklace in platinum is set with oval and cushion- cut pink tour ma lines of over 67 carats total, mixed-cut orange tourmalines of over 56 carats total, cushion-cut green tourmalines of over 53 carats total, oval and cushion-cut tanzanites of over 40 carats total, oval and cushion-cut aquamarines of over 16 carats total, a cushion-cut morganite of over 30 carats, a cushion-cut rubellite of over 14 carats, and a princess-cut and round-brilliant cut diamonds of over seven carats total – thus brilliantly displaying the full spectrum of nature. The unexpected pairing of crisp greens, cerulean blues, golden, orange and ethereal pink gemstones took over a year to procure before the ideal grouping, in which all the gemstone colours complemented one another, was achieved.

Related: An exclusive first look inside Stockholm’s Tiffany & Co. flagship

When Bulgari unveiled the company’s Magnifica high jewellery collection in Milan in June this year, it also showcased the most extraordinary combination of superlative gems and bold design from the Roman Maison. Among these were the necklace Mediterranean Queen, a vision of matched gems that sent a hush through the audience.

With its intricate gold, cabochon-cut emerald and diamond construction evoking sea waves, the Mediterranean Queen, which required 2,400 hours to be completed, is an expression of the jeweller’s daring, unapologetic attitude. But it was the five marvellous oval cushion-cut Paraíba tourmalines, weighing in total about 500 carats, that silenced everyone. As some of the rarest gems in the world and still regarded as the newest superstars on the gemstone firmament, the necklace exuded the refreshing crystal-clear waters surrounding Italy’s Sardinia island.

The extremely rare Paraíba tourmalines – neon blue to greenish-blue – were first found in 1989 near the village of São José da Batalha in Paraíba State, north-eastern Brazil. At the turn of the century, when the Brazilian mine had run dry, remarkable like-coloured gems were found in Nigeria and Mozambique, providing further proof that Africa and South America had once been linked together in one super continent.

Carat prices went stratospheric, and today, as even the Mozambique sources of Paraíba tourmalines have become very limited, the result is “surreal” prices that reflect the insatiable demand for its fresh, incomparable blue. All things considered – beauty of colour, its saturation and rarity being the most important factors – these relatively newly discovered gems have upended and transformed the jewellery industry with their superlative colours. Had Marilyn Monroe known of them, Paraíba tourmalines are the ones she would have been singing about today.

With a staggering 350 masterpieces of high jewellery and unique watches, Bulgari expressed its Roman DNA and 137 years of experience and credentials in appropriating the most extraordinary, rare and precious gems required to express its bold but timeless creativity. Worth hundreds of millions of Euros, showcasing hundreds of thousands of hours of patient craftsmanship, the creative bravery is a triumph for joie de vivre, or as the Italians would say: La dolce vita.

Designed to steal the spotlight on red carpets around the world, Chopard high jewellery is characterised by the rainbow’s outstanding colour palette. Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, which Chopard has been officially partnering with since 1998, the Maison’s atelier annually rises to new pinnacles as the company’s co-president and artistic director Caroline Scheufele dreams up a number of creations corresponding to the number of years since the annual festival first began – this past July being the 74th.

The Paradise-themed Red Carpet Collection 2021 was inspired by unspoilt, generous and sublime nature, a realm of all possibilities. That indeed everything seems possible in Chopard's home base of Meyrin, Switzerland, was demonstrated by the vision of not one, but two classic emerald-and-diamond necklaces. A twin set of the most luxurious kind – effortlessly illustrating what a cut does for a gemstone. One facetted, one cabochon-cut. Both gorgeous.

Usually, emeralds are cabochon-cut – giving them a domed surface with no facets – because the smoothness eminently displays the mesmerising inclusions within a gem. But if they are not cabochon-cut, then they will be emerald-cut. Indeed, the emerald-cut was ‘invented’ for and therefore named after the spectacular green gems, since they naturally form in a crystal structure best suited to this cut.

So, when Caroline Scheufele found a round facetted emerald of almost 62 carats, the self-professed gemstone lover must have snapped it right up. And when an almost twice-the-weight cabochon-cut emerald of a little over 112 carats came along, the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself: set in a classic and very glamorous look, each emerald is presented on an abstract diamond necklace –making up the perfect pair. Both neck laces are made of ethical Fairmined-certified 18-carat white gold – one with a round- shaped emerald of 61.79 carats and diamonds of various cuts (totally 51.91 carats); the other with an emerald cabochon of 112.27 carats and diamonds of various cuts (totalling 116.81 carats).

The 55.55 necklace is an ode to the first century of Chanel’s iconic N°5 fragrance – perhaps the best-known fragrance in the world. The unique creation – and indeed the eponymous N°5 collection of 123 extraordinary jewellery pieces to which it belongs – showcases the codes of the famous scent. Back in 1921, the perfume made quite a commotion. With the modernity of its fragrance, the purity of the bottle and the mystery of the name, N°5 was nothing short of a revolution. In 2021, Patrice Leguéreau, director of the Chanel Fine Jewelry Creation Studio, proudly present the Collection N°5, jewellery meandering through the soul of the perfume.

The statement necklace spearheading the collection took more than two years to make. It is composed around a custom-cut diamond with a most symbolic weight – an emerald-cut 55.55 carat diamond echoing the geometric silhouette of the bottle. The D Flawless diamond is delicately framed in an 18-carat white gold bezel, set with 104 round-cut diamonds and 42 baguette-cut diamonds.

The profile of the stopper, the silhouette of the bottle, the fastener shaped like the lucky number five (Gabrielle Chanel’s own favourite number) and the cascading of pear-shaped diamonds in different sizes in front as a postmodern deconstruction of the aerosol effect of a spray, turn the piece into an ultimate tribute to the perfume and a vibrant testimony to the company’s history and DNA.

The vocation of the piece is above all about heritage, and therefore it is only fitting that it will never be sold, but forever destined to be a part of the brand's historic archive Chanel Patrimoine, as a witness to this chapter of the perfume’s history and the legacy of the Fine Jewelry department. It will serve as an eternal and visible symbol of the unfailing links that unite Place Vendôme and the N°5 perfume.

With the Udyana necklace from the Sixième Sens collection from 2021, Cartier has gone multifunctional in the extreme, separating “the girls from the women”, as the goldsmith requirements for the necklace’s transformable construction are highly demanding. Multifunctional means that the necklace design allows for separation into a multitude of smaller pieces, thus giving styling versatility to match any and all fashions and fascinations.

The necklace can be worn with or without the pendant to the back (which itself can also be worn as a brooch) and on a chain necklace. The large pendant can be worn with or without the central engraved ruby of 67.7 carats from Mozambique, while the two large side ornaments of the necklace can be dismounted and worn as hair jewellery or brooches.

Each stone in the necklace is set in a bezel, made to size by hand, and the piece is designed to be changed as desired without any visible engineering, whilst the whole remains secure – a feat requiring some 23 months in the making. The use of the engraved and carved sapphires, rubies and emeralds reflects Cartier’s past with an Indian clientele, while the colour combination is symbolic of the style of the Maison since the 1920s. In 1911, Jacques Cartier (1884 -1941) went to India to see the stones that had been worked there for centuries.

Great lovers of ornaments and precious stones, the Mughals employed the expertise of Indian artists, the only ones who knew how to cut emeralds, sapphires and spinels in relief and engrave them. The stones, emblematic of traditional Indian jewellery, inspired Cartier to create colour combinations that had never been seen before, using red, green and blue – and when the Maharajahs later visited Paris and London, they left orders at Cartier to have their diamonds reset in European fashion, mounted in platinum.

Related: These are the 7 pieces Vogue editors are coveting from the latest Cartier Christmas campaign