Making and designing jewellery can be a solitary occupation, and this has never been truer for Boucheron’s creative director Claire Choisne, who is, at the time of this interview, confined to her apartment in Paris. The designer lives within walking distance of the ritzy Palais-Royal as well as her high jewellery atelier at Place Vendôme. She may be missing her tools and her bench, but Choisne is keeping herself busy doing online video calls ahead of the brand’s latest high jewellery launch.
It’s been bitterly cold, she tells me, with freezing temperatures and snow for nearly a week. She wears a soft, leopard-print blouse and jewellery from her celebrated Jack de Boucheron collection. Behind her is a sizeable, framed print of an ornate beetle. “Do you like it?” she asks me. “It was designed by a digital artist who photoshops hundreds of jewellery pieces together so that they look like insects.”
Rather than repeating what other heritage jewellery houses are doing with their conventional cuts and predictable interpretations, Choisne has shaken up the industry with her cutting-edge vision of what high jewellery should look like. There’s a rebelliousness about her that is unexpected considering she’s at the helm of one the world’s longest-standing maisons.
“I love to try out new things. I don’t want to design something that’s old-fashioned,” she says. At the same time, she has a penchant for bringing the past into the present, which is especially evident with her new Histoire de Style, Art Déco collection.
