The 8 best High Jewellery pieces from Couture Week, according to our editor-in-chief

While the world was fixated on the fabulous fashions at Haute Couture, the eagle-eyed lapidaries and precious stone savants honed in on the exclusive High Jewellery presentations, also taking place in Paris. Our editor-in-chief Martina Bonnier had her heels on the cobblestoned ground, reporting back on the exciting showcases. Below, we've collated Bonnier's must-see pieces and must-know insights.

For Boucheron's latest High Jewellery collection 'Ailleurs', artistic director Claire Choisne bent the rules. Pushing beyond the usual boundaries of High Jewellery, the French luxury house mixed materials rarely used in jewellery, incorporating rattan, brunt wood, and meteorite with precious stones and jewels. Solidifying its connection with the natural world for this collection, Boucheron even managed to encapsulate real butterfly wings in its fluttering designs.

The stand-out piece among the many wondrous innovations, however, was an elegant necklace made from hollowed out white stone pebbles adorned with white gold tattoos and diamonds, both pear-shaped and brilliant-cut. "Stone is an incredibly difficult material to work with as it will crack if you're not careful," Bonnier pointed out. "The craftsmanship is what makes this necklace a true masterpiece."

Following the January launch of the first chapter of 'The Alchemist of Light' High Jewellery collection, De Beers continues to explore the natural, elemental magic of light, unveiling five new jewellery sets during Couture Week in Paris. The set that caught Bonnier's eyes was the 'Light Rays' set, suffused with sunshine tones from bronze to yellow. Coloured polished diamonds are set against De Beers' signature rough stones and finished of with fan-shaped motifs. “It’s the first time De Beers uses titanium in a collection,” notes Bonnier, speaking of the technical sophistication of the metal work.

The piece pinpointed as a stand out in the set of nine was the Double Crown Ring. Set over two fingers, the one-of-a-kind contemporary piece was inspired by sunlight radiating across the sky. The accompanying jacket which makes this a stand out has been created using layers of coloured titanium in orange, yellow and silver, punctuated by lines of white diamonds and set against dramatic black rhodium-plated gold.

In Cartier's 'Beautés du Monde' High Jewellery collection, the French jeweller took a closer look at all that is infinitesimally small in the natural world. Insects lend themselves as a favourable source of inspiration, the iridescent beauty of butterfly wing resulting in Bonnier's favourite piece in the line-up: the 'Apatura' necklace. "Opals are having a moment in high jewellery," Bonnier points out. And this stone in particular evokes the idea of the most delicate insect, the shimmering and shifting colours reproducing the natural world in an abstract way.

Just like any Cartier High Jewellery piece, the process of creating the 'Apatura' necklace was a time-consuming one. Cartier's designers and stone experts looked for materials which colours most closely resembled the fire of the central Australian opals: diamonds, orange sapphires and sapphire beads. The threading technique required meticulous sorting, and in the Cartier tradition of transformable jewellery, the necklace can be worn with or without its detachable pendant, equipped with a fastening system that is as tiny as it is discreet.

An obsessive collector, Gucci's Alessandro Michele started with the historicised experience of the Grand Tour — a journey of indefinite duration undertaken by European aristocrats and intellectuals from the eighteenth century onwards — when creating the third instalment of his High Jewellery collection, 'Hortus Deliciarum'. This source of inspiration is why the collection presents itself as five enlightened and enlightening chapters of a travel diary, spanning the mid-nineteenth century and continuing to the 1970s.

"In this collection the miniature mosaics were a real stand-out," says Bonnier. A set of unique cameos depicting Ancient Rome, made between 1850 and 1870, takes centre stage embedded in necklaces, bracelets, earrings, brooches, gold pendants holding sparkling peridot, yellow beryl, red and pink spinel, blue topaz, fire opal, pink tourmaline and colourful diamonds. Like souvenirs in the form of jewellery, they recall the objets brought back from Grand Tours.

Titled “Unexpected Wonders", Bulgari's latest High Jewellery collection was a display of diamonds and emeralds which are "having a true moment right now," says Bonnier. The singular piece which embodies this merger of precious stones best is the Emerald Glory necklace, a display of breathtaking gemstones, unique creativity and unrivalled craftsmanship.

Hours upon hours of complex design and craft — almost 3,000 in total — as well as a mix of awareness, know-how and ingenuity were required to bring this necklace to life. Truly regal in its design, the necklace fans the neck with 73 pear-shaped brilliant-cut diamonds with a detachable band of 11 pear-shaped Colombian emeralds.

For Tiffany's 'Botanica' collection the jeweller anchored the pieces in three core themes: Queen Anne's Lace, Painted Blossom and – Bonnier's personal favourite – the visionary designs of Jean Schlumberger. "He was one of my favourite jewellers of all time," she says. As one of the 20th century’s most gifted artists, Schlumberger is renowned for his fantastical creations infused with wit and curiosity. With extraordinary gemstones as his palette, he transformed nature’s wonders into bejewelled objets.

Inspired by his Hedges and Row necklace originally introduced in 1960, a signature Jean Schlumberger design, Bonnier's favourite piece form the Tiffany line-up features a grandiose layout. The cascading flexible openwork collar is a display of diamond fringe, extending circular turquoise cabochons, each within a circular-cut diamond spray and enhanced by cushion-cut yellow beryls.

This year saw two major Maisons debut their first ever High Jewellery collections: Fendi and Balenciaga.

Designed by Fendi's artistic director of jewellery, Delfina Delettrez Fendi, Fendi's revealed a paruer comprising of a necklace, earrings, and cocktail ring. Taking its name from the latin word Flavus – an ancient Roman signification for yellow, or blond – the designs orbit around a cascading, geometric assemblage of stones. Shimmering amidst showers of precious pavé and baguette white diamonds, the inverted FF monogram designed by Karl Lagerfeld in 1965 was present within each design, rendered in flashes of natural yellow baguette diamonds.

As for Balenicaga, classic motifs pulled directly from the house’s rich archives and daring 21st-Century icons served as inspiration for their first fine jewellery collection. The 20 pieces introduced by creative director Olivier Rousteing’s take their cues from the house's emblematic Labyrinth pattern – first spotted in Balmain's collections in 1970 – and the brand's coat of arms, the 'Balmain Blazon', rooted in the embroideries of Rousteing's Fabergé collection of 2012.

Fashioned from yellow gold – Balmain’s signature color – and set with diamonds, the Labyrinth collection’s ten designs meld together timeless couture precision and the assertive urban spirit of today’s runway. As for the Emblem section of the collection, the graphic treatments pressed into the six golden buttons adorning the house’s signature blazers translated into pieces referencing medieval symbols and the modern Balmain army.