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If there was ever just one thing to know about Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, it was that she never followed the rulebook when it came to design. In fact, she arguably created one entirely her own. Creation came from her intuition, from her experiences, from her freedom to envision what she—and she only—could ideate.
Just as she would never sketch out her dress designs—cutting instead straight into the fabric—jewellery followed that same instinct. “My jewellery represents an idea,” she was known to say, and that idea often meant defying the stereotypical designs of the day, as it did in 1932 with Bijoux de Diamants, when she declared she “wanted to cover women in constellations”. Now, nearly a century on from her first and only diamond collection, the Maison picks up where she left off—only now the stars have company. Signes & Symboles gathers all four of Coco’s obsessions—the star, the sun, the camellia and the lion—across 85 exquisite high jewellery pieces. Put it this way: if Gabrielle had a horoscope, a coat of arms and a lucky-charm drawer, this is roughly what they’d look like rendered in diamonds.
Each symbol represents, partly, the autobiography of Gabrielle Chanel. The stars, they trace back to Aubazine, the remote Catholic abbey in central France where she was sent as an orphaned girl and raised by nuns—their five points set into the abbey’s cobblestones. The lion represents her birth sign, Leo. Specifically, an August Leo. The sun is the Mediterranean light of the French Riviera she worshipped from Villa La Pausa—a home which always held special meaning. And the camellia, her signature bloom—which is still the House of Chanel’s signature to this day—she famously borrowed from the men’s wardrobe, pinning it to lapels long before it became shorthand for the house itself.
Encompassing all four symbols at the centrefold of Signes & Symboles is the Imprimé Lion necklace, which gathers the star, the sun, the lion and the camellia into a single vertical cascade of diamonds that splits into a V and resolves on a sculptural lion’s head, paved entirely in stones and crowned by a 20.66-carat sapphire. And while it is the statement, Signes & Symboles isn’t only about the showstoppers—and that’s the very Chanel part.
Gabrielle herself believed jewellery “isn’t to make a woman look rich but to adorn her”. Case in point: Coco would mix the precious with the plain, the real with the faux, wearing sumptuous stones beside humble trinkets she kept as lucky charms.
So, alongside the flawless diamonds and cabochon sapphires, the collection leans into its talisman chapter—tiny carved amulets of a camellia, a star, a sun, a lion—strung along the tubular gold chain of the Talisman de Symboles necklace. The maison created different iterations of the piece, including one in white gold with diamonds and white ceramic; its more statement-making sibling is warmed with turquoise, pink sapphires and carnelian. Jewellery you’d instinctively touch for luck, if you will.
Colour also does plenty of talking among the 85 Signes & Symboles pieces. Sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds—also known as Chanel’s “precious four”—anchor everything in bold and saturated tones. Take the Symbole Étoile necklace, for example, which sets purple-blue tanzanite against a 26.21-carat imperial topaz the colour of liquid gold; “there is nothing prettier than a topaz, this gilded water,” Coco once said. And, of course, because the Chanel woman has no time for a necklace that only serves one purpose, it transforms. Shorten it and the back becomes a bracelet; unclip the stars and they become earrings.
As for rings, there’s the Symbole Camélia Rose ring, its diamond petals rimmed in pink sapphire and swirling around a 10.32-carat oval D-flawless diamond: her favourite flower reduced to its most elemental sparkle. The Lion Millénaire ring, meanwhile, plays Coco’s best-loved trick—contrast—with a 9.41-carat ruby on one head and a diamond lion carved in relief on onyx on the other.
At its heart, this collection behaves exactly as Coco herself would have wanted: opulent but never stiff. That was always the Coco Chanel sleight of hand—making the extraordinary feel like it already belonged to you, like a secret you happen to be in on. And what better way to express that than through the four symbols from which she built an entire universe? Nearly 100 years on, she’s still handing them out.
CREATIVE DIRECTION: MARNE SCHWARTZ & DANE STOJANOVIC
PHOTOGRAPHY: VLADIMIR MARTI
HAIR STYLIST: JEAN LUC AMARIN
MAKEUP ARTIST: ANNA SADAMORI / SHOTVIEW ARTISTS MANAGEMENT
NAIL ARTIST: NAFISSA DJABI / B AGENCY
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: STEFF HAWKER
CASTING DIRECTOR: ELODIE YELMANI
STYLIST ASSISTANT: VALENTINA MORELLI
PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT: OLIVIER COLAIRO
MODEL: FARHYIA SHIRE / PLATFORM
“into the light” IS PUBLISHED IN THE 18th EDITION OF GRAZIA MIDDLE EAST. ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.
