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Coco Chanel's one-and-only Bijoux de Diamants inspired the house’s 1932 masterpieces
The year was 1932, and diamond dealers were reacting to the disastrous effects of the 1929 Wall Street crash. Gabrielle Chanel—by now a celebrated couturière with a flagship boutique on Paris’s fashionable Rue Cambon—was also navigating difficulties resulting from the Great Depression, later declaring; “My work came about as a reaction to my times.”
Mademoiselle’s days were awash in the expensive tastes of blue-blooded trendsetters, including Jean Cocteau and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, but behind the pomp and circumstance was an independent woman of quiet dignity and keen awareness. Born in 1883 to a peddler and a laundry woman in France’s Loire Valley region, the designer had been handed over to a convent orphanage in Aubazine by her father after her mother died of bronchitis.
It’s understandable, then, that it was Gabrielle Chanel—adorned in tweed and interlocking CC insignia—who the London Diamond Corporation called upon to design a high jewellery collection in the hope it would reinvigorate the faltering market. Not only had Mademoiselle modernised womenswear, but she had also proven herself to be a gifted accessory designer who made costume jewellery with such intricate craftsmanship that it rivaled the real thing.
The resulting Bijoux de Diamants collection of about 50 pieces featured perpetual motion and unrelenting brilliance. Here, an oversized brooch sunbursts outwards from its yellow centre stone, a tribute to Louis XIV who was known as the “Sun King”; there, a nod to the designer’s past—a constellation mosaic from the Aubazine orphanage where the designer first learned to sew—reimagined in the platinum-cast Comète necklace.
Patrice Leguéreau, Director of Chanel Fine Jewellery Creation Studio, has used Bijoux de Diamants as inspiration for his new 77-piece 1932 High Jewellery Collection. Precious, fantastical, and in all cases dramatic and dazzling—the spectacular gemstones chosen for this year’s three chapters are inspired by the comet, moon, and sun; the infinite grandeur found in outer space; as well as the much-referenced celestial, planetary, and meteoric motifs championed by Gabrielle Chanel herself.
When Bijoux de Diamants was unveiled 90 years ago, the collection was showcased in an unusual fashion. At the two-week launch event at Mademoiselle’s 29, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré home—an astonishing space decorated with gilded lions and coromandel screens, described in a press clipping as “one of the most notable private residences of Paris”—these creations took pride of place on wax busts rather than the usual jewelers’ trays.
The exclusive soirée was attended by luminaries including Pablo Picasso, Baron Édouard de Rothschild, and Condé Nast, as well as myriad European royals. The epitome of elegant restraint, invitation cards boasted minimal designs that reveled in black and white simplicity, while an entrance fee of 20 francs was donated to two charities: the Société de la Charité Maternelle de Paris; and the Assistance Privée à la Classe Moyenne.
