21 November 2024 |
Collage artist JAMES STOPFORTH
Instagram: @boucheron
boucheron.com
With the launch of its first boutique in New York, the esteemed 166-year- old jewelry house begins its next chapter in high design history.
In the glittering world of Boucheron, why wouldn’t you wear a sparkling, fully articulated peacock feather necklace set with a shining Ceylon oval-cut sapphire of 6.34 carats and scintillating pavé diamonds and sapphires in white gold just because? “I’m obsessed with the fact that we need to have high jewelry pieces coming out of the safe,” says the house’s CEO, Hélène Poulit-Duquesne, of its newly reinterpreted Question Mark necklace, plucked straight from the brand’s 19th-century archives.
This fall, Boucheron is expanding with a 3,900- square-foot Madison Avenue boutique designed with art deco flair. Slick glass and metal collide with black lacquered wood; alabaster lamps are by the designer Pierre Chareau; straw marquetry is on display; and a green lacquered wooden chest of drawers is in the shape of an exquisite emerald. One of the walls is plastered with Atelier d’Offard wallpaper in the style of old New York graffiti, but with Boucheron advertising campaigns from the past. Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the likes of the Astors and Vanderbilts would travel from the U.S. to get their Boucheron in Paris, so in 1903, Louis Boucheron—the son of the house’s founder, Frédéric—opened an office in New York to manage client relations and orders. Now, more than 120 years later, the city is getting its first Boucheron boutique.
Goutte Question Mark necklace in white gold with tourmalines, diamonds, and rock crystal by BOUCHERON
Goutte Question Mark necklace in white gold with tanzanites, diamonds, and rock crystal by BOUCHERON
For the uninitiated, the French heritage jewelry brand was founded in 1858. Frédéric was the first jeweler to set up shop on the historic Place Vendôme in Paris, opening its doors there in 1893. Fourteen years earlier, in 1879, he had invented a clasp-less necklace—the aforementioned Question Mark—reportedly making him the first jeweler of his kind to do that too. “In fact, he wanted to free women because, at that time, you had to put on your high jewelry with a lady’s maid,” Poulit-Duquesne says. “Inventing a necklace without a clasp allowed women to be free.” Also worth noting: In 2024, Boucheron is very much a high jewelry brand for the female gaze. Alongside Poulit-Duquesne, its creative director, Claire Choisne, has been in her post since 2011, making Boucheron one of the few European high jewelry houses to be spearheaded by women.
“I’m very excited because I feel that we are telling a story that is really appealing to the Americans,” Poulit-Duquesne says. “We have a unique story that we are telling everywhere in the world, but we’re entering every country with the same story. The first point, which is really differentiating from the other brands, is that Boucheron is really about innovation.” She adds: “We also have big collectors in the U.S.” And they’re particularly interested in those extremely rare, hard-to-find antique pieces by the brand, like tiaras, big brooches, and art deco necklaces. So much so, that Boucheron has created reproductions of some of the most famous archive pieces for the New York boutique—think 1899’s bow brooch commissioned by Caroline Astor’s husband and a necklace made to order for the American socialite Marie-Louise Mackay that same year, or the aigrette that Cornelius Vanderbilt bought for his daughter Gertrude in 1897.
To celebrate the expansion, the design of the famous Question Mark necklace has been turned on its head: Now it’s reversible, with the option to turn it around and reveal the glimmering rock crystal and diamonds that lie on the other side of the rubellites, tanzanites, and green tourmalines. “It’s really about why not?” Poulit-Duquesne says when I ask what inspired the reversible style. “It took us a long time in our atelier to make it happen because, technically, it was complicated, because when you reverse it, it has to have exactly the right sizing and fitting.” The new necklaces also draw from the clean lines of an 1884 piece that was another special order for Vanderbilt.
In the shimmering universe of high jewelry, Boucheron undoubtedly has an incredible history and a unique point of view. When tasked with describing the aesthetic for the unfamiliar, Poulit-Duquesne talks of it as being “kawaii,” the cultural term for cute and innocent in Japan. “It’s very specific in terms of design and very modern and very bold,” she tells me. “It’s more classical pieces that are beautiful but more on the kawaii side —cute and floral and very sweet, but we have very bold designs.”
Beyond the new boutique in New York, Poulit-Duquesne has a dream for the brand to one day track down the jewels of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh. One August day in 1928, he brought 7,571 diamonds and 1,432 emeralds, as well as sapphires, rubies, and pearls, to the Place Vendôme boutique for the creation of a 149-piece collection. “None of them have been found again on the market,” she says. “We don’t know what happened and probably they’re still in some safe.”
Another of her favorite Boucheron-history moments is related to the Titanic. Legend has it that Madeleine Astor, John Jacob Astor IV, and her collection of Boucheron jewelry were all on the doomed ocean liner, but only Madeleine survived, along with a single Boucheron sapphire and diamond ring, which she is said to have worn for the rest of her life in honor of her husband. “I was obsessed with that story,” Poulit- Duquesne says.
New York is just the next chapter of epic history for Boucheron.
Goutte Question Mark necklace, verso side, in white gold with diamonds and rock crystal by BOUCHERON
Goutte Question Mark necklace in white gold with rubellites, diamonds, and rock crystal by BOUCHERON
