Being Alive: Boucheron Presents its Spectacular Human Being High Jewellery Collection

At Haute Couture Week in Paris, Boucheron’s Creative Director Claire Choisne unveiled her latest Carte Blanche High Jewellery collection, Human Being. As always, it’s an absolute masterpiece, blending simplicity, complexity, similarities, differences, and more dualities that transport us to another world entirely. Personally, I was mesmerised by the ambitious scope of the jewels on offer – their sheer size and dimensionality – as well as the pared-back, almost futuristically minimalistic nature of the collection, which is a Claire Choisne signature. During the presentation, I was able to ask Claire some questions about her latest pieces and explore the collection in more depth. Here are the highlights and some behind-the-scenes insights for all you jewellery lovers…

Rather than start with a heap of effusive praise, let me just say that the Boucheron Carte Blanche Human Being High Jewellery collection is ambitious, bold and dramatic. It is full of interesting materials and, most importantly of all, meticulously crafted by a talented team of artisans within the Maison’s and outside. The concept is centred on the idea of connectivity – what brings us together as humans, and what sets us apart.

Throughout the collection, there is a focus on an “archetypal form of High Jewellery necklace to represent this common denominator”. Simply put, each of the five cluster necklaces presented in Human Being is identical in its size, shape, structure and layout. What sets them apart is the colours, materials and savoir-faire employed across each set, which is a metaphor for the same-but-different nature of humanity itself.

Incredibly, more than 14,000 hours of craftsmanship were needed to bring these pieces to life, so let’s take a closer look before diving into my interview with Claire during Paris Haute Couture Week.

Rain

Rock crystal and Boucheron go hand in hand. This crystal-clear quartz is a signature of the Maison, but only when it has been crisply shaped and worked into something elevated and refined. In the Rain necklace, we find rock crystal paved with diamonds, set in white gold, requiring 1,300 hours of work. In the ring, there’s the addition of sapphire glass, resulting in another 250 hours of craftsmanship. The concept is a cascade of diamonds raining down onto the skin with rock crystal chosen for its transparency, so the diamonds appear to float.

To achieve this, Boucheron’s artisans first crafted hollow droplets out of the crystal, into which they poured successive layers of plant-based resin. Diamonds were then painstakingly placed inside each droplet by hand, layer by layer and in a very specific order, to give a three-dimensional effect. This extremely precise process was carried out in a vacuum to prevent any microparticles or air bubbles from forming. Altogether, over 4,800 diamonds were set in place one by one, encased as though suspended within the rock crystal.

Flower

Let’s start with the Flower necklace, which is set with a 3.26 carat D-colour, VVS1 cushion-cut diamond and perfectly matching rose quartzes (with polished or softly frosted finishes) totalling 1,532 carats. It’s crafted in pink gold, white gold and platinum, requiring nearly 4,000 hours of craftsmanship. This is matched with a ring, also with a 0.71 carat E-colour, VVS1 pear-cut diamond and 141 carats of pink quartz, combined with sapphire glass, gold and platinum. Of course, this is only the start of the story! The hand-painted design across both pieces was inspired by floral wallpaper and realised Alexandra Chauchereau, an expert in micro-miniature painting, who achieved each bloom under intense magnification.

According to Boucheron: “An equally critical and delicate stage was the application of the protective finishing varnish: achieving a flawlessly smooth surface, without a single air bubble, called for absolute technical mastery. Every stone took around ten hours on average to complete, from layers of micro-painting through to the matte-finish varnish.”

Light

In person, the Light necklace is breathtaking with 1,547 carats of beautiful morganite and a 1.34 carat D-colour, internally flawless trilliant-cut diamond, set in pink gold and platinum. The ring is similarly striking, with a further 174 carats of peachy pink gems, diamonds, sapphire glass, pink gold and platinum. Unlike other suites, here we see droplets of round brilliant-cut diamonds, juxtaposed against pear-shaped diamonds to create an intense, almost sunrise-like warmth.

As you can imagine, sourcing more than 1,500 carats of perfectly matching morganite with the same colour, intensity and saturation was no easy task. Plus, it is worth noting that morganite is a vibration-sensitive stone, so using conventional hammering techniques might have compromised its internal structure. Instead, Boucheron’s artisans fitted and screwed prongs around each stone, which added to the complexity of the manufacturing process. The largest morganites were also hollowed out to allow for diamonds to be set into the mineral itself… another challenge. Fortunately, the results are worth it.

Tattoo

The first thing that struck me about Tattoo was its unusual chocolate brown colour palette. The necklace is brought to life with trilliant diamonds and smoky quartzes totalling 580 carats, all paved with diamonds and set in white gold. The matching ring also utilises pear-cut diamonds and another 83 carats of smoky quartz, paired with further diamonds, sapphire glass and white gold.

In this suite, Claire sought to recreate the aesthetic of Victorian-era tattoos on the skin. Firstly, she transformed iconic motifs of the Maison – poppies, roses, snakes, and butterflies – into tattoo-like drawings and arranged them symmetrically across the piece, starting from the central point and working outwards. The look is achieved using the glyptic arts in which each piece of quartz is carved to create a bas-relief effect by master craftsman Joseph Bongrand. As the Maison explains: “Since this stone engraving technique doesn’t allow for the use of colour to bring out its finer details, these can only be revealed through subtle variations in depth, relief, and texture. This makes it a truly sculptural feat, where every line and variance in the surface is designed to catch the light and alter the way it’s perceived.”

Apparently, the artisans who worked on this piece had to invent more than 200 tools to complete the design and then continually make new ones as the hardness of quartz minimised their effectiveness over time. Only after 1,100 hours of glyptic artistry was their work complete.

Checkers

Lastly, there’s Checkers – a necklace set with a 2.63 carat D-colour, VVS1 trilliant-cut diamond and onyx totalling 1,535 carats. The matching ring features a pear-cut diamond, 133 carats of onyx, and further diamonds set in white gold and titanium. Its inspiration comes from the houndstooth textile pattern (a nod to couture fashion), which is achieved not only through colour but by engraving the onyx using a femtosecond laser. This incredibly precise technology is commonly used in watchmaking, emitting ultra-fast micro pulses to remove surface material without generating heat. “Finding the right depth was the real challenge,” Boucheron explains, noting that it needed to be “deep enough to impart texture and relief to the pattern, yet not so deep as to weaken the stone”.

To add to the difficulty, Claire Choisne wanted an uninterrupted pattern, so the eye perceives a single, seamless swathe of houndstooth when the piece is viewed head-on, both on the front and reverse sides. To achieve this effect, each of the 163 stones was individually designed and treated, requiring a ‘map’ that was developed using CAD modelling. Finally, to enhance its wearability, the six largest onyxes were hollowed out to make the piece lighter.

So, now that you understand the collection, let me share the insights that Claire Choisne provided me with during Paris Haute Couture Week.

Katerina Perez: What is at the heart of Human Being as a collection? Is there a source of inspiration that is most resonant for you?

Claire Choisne: What was important for me was this idea that we are all the same yet also different and unique. I love that paradox because we share so much as human beings while each of us remains completely individual. We tried to capture this idea throughout the collection, so you will see that all the pieces share the same outline to express the fact that we are all the same, but the techniques, materials, stones, and savoir-faire are all different to express that we are unique.

KP: Light is such a beautiful necklace, thanks to the use of morganite. What can you tell us about this set?

CC: I wanted to play with light and give radiance to the skin, so we used morganites. The challenge was that with large stones, the colour usually appears deeper than with smaller stones. We had to find different rough materials ranging from light to dark to achieve a consistent colour across all the stones. We added diamonds in the middle, and I love that the diamonds appear to float on the skin because, for this piece, as with some others in the collection, we chose exactly the same colour between the necklace and the skin, and we put it on a man with the same skin tone. Even though the necklace is quite impressive, it almost disappears, and the result is that you see the human first and not the necklace first, which was the goal. It took 3,200 hours of work with 155 pieces of morganite totalling 1,547 carats.

We used pieces from our archives, like flower brooches and animal brooches, to design the tattoo patterns, and we asked Joseph Bongrand, a young artist whose work I love, to do the engraving of all the tattoo patterns inside the stones. The work is so precise that he even managed to engrave on the tiniest stones. I chose a cabochon cut that is perfectly flat, like a second skin, and again used smoky quartz. This piece took 3,220 hours of work, which is the most of any piece, yet it is light at only 300 grams and almost disappears on the skin.

KP: What do you hope people take away from this collection?

CC: I want people to see that jewellery should celebrate the person wearing it. It is not about showing off the necklace but about revealing the human behind it because we are all the same, yet we are all unique, and that is something worth celebrating.

As always, Boucheron is setting the benchmark for exceptional inspiration, design, craftsmanship and innovation in High Jewellery. We never know what Claire and her incredible team of artisans are going to showcase next, and that’s what will always keep me coming back to Paris Haute Couture Week, year after year.