Bold and Beautiful: The Summer’s Most Magnificent High-Jewelry Reveals

Spirited designs abounded this summer as the luxury houses of Paris’s Place Vendôme put on a fabulous show with their new high-jewelry collections. Many maisons chose to tap into heritage motifs from their archives and reinterpret them in fresh ways for today’s collectors.

Nature, as always, was a consistent theme. But this year, creative directors adopted a more thoughtful approach, musing on both the fleeting beauty of natural phenomena — sunsets at Chanel, delicate blossoms at Chaumet and Mikimoto — and the urgent need for environmental conservation.

In terms of trends, dramatic collars, trailing back-necklaces, unisex brooches, and transformable jewels were still going strong. Colored diamonds, particularly cheerful yellows, were also front and center in many collections. At De Beers and Messika, they channeled the warmth of the African sunlight, while Fendi used them to represent its signature color in a spectacular jewel honoring the brand’s centenary. Here’s a look at some of the standout collections from summer 2025.

Chopard: Red Carpet Collection 2025, Caroline’s Universe 

First unveiled at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Chopard’s 78-piece, première-worthy collection is a tribute to themes that creative director Caroline Scheufele favors, including flowers, animals, fashion, the cosmos and love. A cocktail ring bearing a lifelike representation of her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Byron, in colored diamonds nestles up against a pair of flamboyant earrings in yellow- and pink-tinted titanium and perfectly matched white opals. One extravagant collar necklace bears lace-like motifs in pink sapphires and amethysts as a nod to the couture gowns that Scheufele also likes to design. Another necklace and earring set boasts interlacing briolette-cut pink sapphires and diamond brilliants in heart-shaped arrangements, celebrating a symbol that has represented Chopard’s brand since Scheufele’s best-selling Happy Hearts collection debuted in 2009.

Chanel: Reach for the Stars 

Chanel’s glamorous new collection explores many of the same cosmic motifs that once starred in the house’s 1932 Bijoux de Diamants collection — the first and only high jewelry that Coco Chanel herself designed. A response to the economic crash of 1929, the collection aimed to revive the world’s interest in diamonds and to celebrate the aspirations of women on the brink of modernity. Reach for the Stars comprises 109 diamond-heavy open necklaces, multi-finger rings, brooches, tiaras and asymmetric ear cuffs, all divided into three otherworldly themes: the comet, the lion (Chanel’s astrological birth sign) and wings. This last feathery motif is a novel one among the house’s jewelry collections, and honors one of its founder’s infamous bons mots: “If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.” The collection’s hero necklace, Wings of Chanel, features two diamond-set wings that sweep around the neck, holding at their base a magnificent 19.55-carat padparadscha sapphire.

Cartier: En Équilibre 

Graphic proportions, geometric shapes and intense symmetry defined the Art Deco designs that Jacques Cartier, grandson of Cartier’s founder, contributed to the maison exactly a century ago, bolstering the company’s status as a visionary jeweler among society’s elite. Today, these characteristics have inspired Cartier’s En Équilibre collection, which features architectural necklaces, rings, earrings and pins. It also highlights the vanishingly rare skill of glyptics — the ancient craft of gemstone sculpting that has played a key role in Cartier’s jewelry aesthetic for over 100 years — with a showstopping flamingo-shaped brooch of carved pink quartz and agate.

Graff: 1963

Much as it did last season, Graff chose to spotlight a single high-jewelry necklace in Paris, this time with a matching bracelet and statement earrings. Celebrating the Swinging ’60s, when the house was established, the mesmeric 1963 necklace consists of concentric white-gold and diamond ellipses in a nod to the era’s famous psychedelia. Graff’s expert artisans set almost 8,000 oval, baguette and round diamonds — totaling over 129 carats — into the necklace alone, adding an intricate line of round pavé emeralds to the inside edge of each motif. This detail delivers an unexpected flash of electric color with every movement and — as green is Graff’s signature hue — acts as a potent reminder of the brand’s identity.

Boucheron: Carte Blanche Impermanence 

Moved by the increasing fragility of our natural world, Boucheron’s boundary-pushing creative director, Claire Choisne, presented six botanical jewelry sculptures emulating Japanese ikebana flower arrangements and consisting of innovative detachable elements — pins, brooches, multi-finger rings — that one can wear separately. True to her style, the pieces combine precious stones and metals with inventive materials from other industries, all in a monochromatic palette that builds a coherent and overarching theme. Borosilicate glass delivers a realistic transparency to the petals of one tulip-shaped hair jewel, while titanium, ceramic and aluminum form a voluminous yet lightweight brooch of pavé-set wisteria flowers. Most captivating of all, the titanium petals of a poppy brooch are coated in Vantablack, a pigment the brand is using under license from artist Anish Kapoor. One of the darkest materials on earth, Vantablack is made of carbon nanotubes and absorbs over 99% of visible light, lending the ethereal blossom an almost menacing invisibility and resonance — a stark reminder that if humanity is slow to act, many of the earth’s most incredible creations will disappear for good. 

Piaget: Shapes of Extraleganza

Piaget looked to the energetic silhouettes and vibrant colors of 1960s and ’70s pop culture for its playful high-jewelry collection, arranging house signatures such as ornamental stones and intricate goldwork to dazzling effect in zigzags, waves and stripes that nod to the Pop Art and Op Art movements. One highlight of the collection, the Kaleidoscope Lights suite, features a collar necklace with an intricate mosaic of turquoise, lapis lazuli, malachite and other semiprecious stones, interspersed with lines of round-cut white diamonds and suspending a pear-shaped diamond drop. The piece took Piaget’s master lapidarists, gem-setters and goldsmiths over 300 hours to craft. Opals — the favorite gemstone of one-time chairman Yves Piaget, who dubbed them “living canvases” — provide another spectacular highlight. In the Flowing Curves suite, they nestle in pebble-shaped, textured white-gold settings to evoke the free-flowing, organically inspired art of the early ’70s hippie movement.

Pomellato: Collezione 1967 

The Milanese house of Pomellato showcased an exuberant collection that also harks back to its mid-century origins, with 75 pieces that exemplify its emblematic design codes. Chains and links feature prominently, drawing on founder Pino Rabolini’s expertise in gold chain-making. Here, the jeweler fuses these practical forms with avant-garde silhouettes — long earrings, chunky XL bracelets, bold bib necklaces — and embellishes them with myriad pavé gemstones, including garnets, diamonds, sapphires and tourmalines. Meanwhile, in a masterful execution by the brand’s in-house artisans, voluminous cocktail rings contrast cabochon-cut semiprecious stones — a Pomellato signature — with pavé-set diamonds for a joyful disco ball effect. 

Messika: Terres D’Instinct 

Messika celebrated its 20th anniversary with a collection honoring the landscapes and wildlife of southern Africa, inspired by a journey that founder Valerie Messika undertook in Namibia. Eschewing figurative representation, the pieces nod to flora and fauna through stylized and abstract details. The Zebra Mnyama choker and earrings balance precision-cut chevrons of onyx with rows of baguette-cut diamonds in symbolic tribute to the stripy beast, while the pavé diamond surface of the Fauve necklace bears ingenious “slashes” from unseen lions’ claws to reveal the brushed yellow gold beneath. Meanwhile, alternating ripples of diamonds and brushed gold in the Mirage collier and matching cuff evoke the shifting dunes of the Namib desert, their contrasting textures creating an illusion of shimmering movement.   

Tasaki: Ritz Par Tasaki

Building on a storyline it introduced last year, Tasaki continued its partnership with Paris’s Ritz Hotel, a historic emblem of luxury and good times. With four glittering new suites, the Japanese jeweler conjures many of the cultural luminaries who have graced the hotel’s plush halls since its foundation over 127 years ago — among them actress Sarah Bernhardt and authors Ernest Hemingway and Marcel Proust. The collection takes design cues from the landmark’s architectural details. The firework-like motifs that adorn strands of akoya pearls in the Lumineux necklace, for example, are a nod to the exuberant soirées that founder César Ritz hosted at his eponymous establishment, while the elegant curving structures of the Scintillement rings and necklaces reference the hotel’s sweeping spiral staircase.

De Beers: Essence of Nature 

Encompassing 42 one-off creations, De Beers’ Essence of Nature collection draws inspiration from the trees native to the African countries that yield the company’s diamonds. That includes the towering Baobab, which thrives in Botswana. In a first, De Beers used glossy, hand-carved jet, combining it with fancy-color rough diamonds and polished yellow ones in curvaceous pieces that suggest the Baobab’s voluminous trunk and boughs. Also appearing for the first time in these pieces is an intricate setting that the house’s craftsmen have pioneered, placing rough diamonds beside diamond melee. Meanwhile, the Camelthorn Resilience set pays tribute to the hardy desert Camelthorn tree. Sculptural pieces of expertly hand-worked gold mimic the plant’s textured bark, which the jeweler has adorned with rows of basket-set brown and white diamonds.

David Morris: Rare Perfection

David Morris presented a 12-piece collection that, while loosely based on a 1970s advertising campaign of the same name, simply honors the London jeweler’s ongoing pursuit of extraordinary colored gemstones — an obsession since its inception in 1962. Fancy-pink diamonds are a signature accent on several showstopping pieces, including the Palm Beach necklace, which juxtaposes 5.37 carats of mixed-shape pinks with over 42 carats of white diamonds, including a glittering pear-cut, 17.45-carat drop. A cushion-cut, 37.78-carat, royal blue sapphire is the dramatic focal point of the Zaffre ring, which takes its name from the intense cobalt pigment, while the Riviera Emerald pendant necklace showcases a cushion-cut, 44.39-carat Colombian emerald framed by a starburst of round-cut diamonds and emeralds.

Chaumet: Jewels by Nature 

The Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, is arguably Chaumet’s most famous client, and her influence is never far from the house’s repertoire. This season, her historic passion for horticulture inspired Chaumet’s in-house artisans to cultivate 54 precious jewels worthy of modern queens. Three glittering chapters examine different varieties of the empress’s favorite plants, including wild roses, magnolias and irises. Transformable jewels reign supreme here. The five removable rosettes on the Dahlia headpiece, for example, are wearable in five different ways, including on a necklace and in the hair, while a striking 23.11-carat imperial topaz in the Water Lily parure can be worn alone on a delicate diamond-set chain.

Louis Vuitton: Virtuosity 

Louis Vuitton’s vast, 110-piece collection explores many of the creative codes — including chevrons, “LV” monograms and floral motifs — that have been part of the house’s oeuvre since the Victorian era, when it specialized in luxury travel trunks. Its central masterpiece, the Eternal Sun necklace, juxtaposes 27 perfectly matched yellow diamonds — which took the company’s resident gemologist seven years to source — with twisted yellow-gold “ropes” in a nod to the luggage that first cemented Louis Vuitton’s fame. Rare and colorful gemstones dominate the rest of the line, as seen in a captivating gold and diamond collier that took 1,500 hours to produce; it features a triangular-cut Australian black opal of over 30 carats and a verdant 28.01-carat emerald drop. 

Mikimoto: Les Pétales

This 40-piece collection is a tribute to the ephemeral beauty of a rose in full bloom, petals stirring in an invisible breeze. The house’s signature cultured akoya pearls — founder Kokichi Mikimoto was the first to culture pearls successfully over a century ago in Japan — anchor every composition, with blush-tinted gemstones providing romantic accents. Highlights include a spectacular brooch that frames two ultra-rare pink conch pearls within whorls of white-pearl and diamond petals like a pair of blowsy rose heads, and a multi-stranded akoya pearl necklace supporting elegant tumbles of pink morganite, garnet, sapphire and diamond petals as if capturing them in mid-air.

Main image: Louis Vuitton Joy earrings and necklace, the latter featuring spiraling ropes of yellow gold and more than 200 carats of sapphires and tourmalines. (Louis Vuitton)