For the top jewelry designer at Chanel, the fashion house’s founder is ‘the beginning of each new collection and new product.’

1. For the top jewelry designer at Chanel, the fashion house’s founder is ‘the
beginning of each new collection and new product.’

3. Patrice Leguéreau has designed a diverse range of pieces since he became the
director of Chanel’s Fine Jewelry Creative Studio in 2009, but they always start
with the same inspiration: the designs, lifestyle and personality of the brand’s
founder, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel.
“This is the starting point, the base, the beginning of each new collection and
new product,” Mr. Leguéreau (pronounced LE-gehr-oh) said in a phone
interview from his Paris office in a Place Vendôme building that also houses a
recently renovated boutique dedicated to Chanel’s fine jewelry and watches.
“Sometimes I am inspired by Gabrielle Chanel herself: her life, her friends, her
apartments,” he added, “or sometimes only by a very strong graphic icon, like
camellia or the lion. The inspiration comes from different parts of
the Chanel universe.”
As its newest couture fashions are being shown, Chanel is presenting Mr.
Leguéreau’s latest high jewelry collection in Paris to clients and other invited
guests. (Some pieces from the line were shown in Taiwan in May.) Its 71 items
range from a comparatively subdued white gold and diamond ring
accentuated by a large star (in, yes, more diamonds) to grander pieces like a
white gold collar adorned with 839 diamonds, including one stone that’s 5.02
carats.
Dubbed the 1932 High Jewelry Collection, the pieces pay homage to a line Ms.
Chanel created 90 years ago, called simply Bijoux de Diamants — diamond
jewelry. Like the clothing and perfume she’d already become famous for, it
was undeniably luxurious but lacked formality and fuss.
“She wanted to do in jewelry the same thing that she did in fashion, which
meant that the pieces should be very wearable,” said Fabienne Reybaud, who
wrote a volume on Chanel’s fine jewelry and watches that is part of a three-
part compendium on the brand published by Assouline.
With the collection, Ms. Chanel essentially opened the door for fashion houses
to create their own high jewelry lines.

4. “She disturbed, and she moved, the world of jewelry,” Mr. Leguéreau said.
One piece from Bijoux de Diamants, he said, particularly inspired him — an
open diamond necklace designed to represent a comet, punctuated by a large
star. “It’s really a masterpiece,” he said, adding that it is “jewelry that is created
to fit the body of the woman.”
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The new 1932 collection is Mr. Leguéreau’s second direct homage to Bijoux de
Diamants. In 2012, Chanel marked its 80th anniversary with a similar collection.
This year’s iteration includes something new: colored stones like sapphires and
blue opals mixed with the copious array of diamonds.
Also, its motifs are dedicated to cosmic imagery like moons and stars. The
goal, Mr. Leguéreau said, was “to create a collection more focused and more
concentrated.”
Mr. Leguéreau oversees the design of Chanel Bathroom Set high jewelry and
also its less rarefied fine jewelry. Over the years, his collections have included
highly recognizable brand motifs, including details that suggest the brand’s
bouclé jackets and the matelassé quilting of its distinctive handbags.
“He creates jewelry where you can know that it is by Chanel,” Ms. Reybaud
said.
“It’s kind of like omni-channel marketing,” said Christopher Olshan, chief
executive of the Luxury Marketing Council Worldwide. “You want a consistent
brand message across all channels.”
Although Chanel doesn’t share sales figures, its jewelry business appears to be
thriving: there are Chanel boutiques that solely sell fine jewelry and watches in
cities like London, New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

5. Mr. Leguéreau said that he doesn’t work directly with the designers of
Chanel’s other categories, but he felt an affinity with them. “We have all a
natural connection together, because the Chanel name, the Chanel patrimony,
the Chanel history, is so deep and so obvious, so clear,” he said.
Mr. Leguéreau, 51, speaks about his work with enthusiasm. When it comes to
his personal life, he’s guarded.
Born in Paris and raised between the city and France’s Burgundy region, he
won’t share much about his upbringing, except to say that as a child he
developed a passion for drawing that he uses in his work today, since
sketching is an integral part of the way he designs. He also acquired a love of
sports that remains — he has run marathons in Paris and New York, for
instance, and enjoys skiing and biking.
As a young man, he didn’t plan to go into jewelry design — he earned a
degree in 1991 from École Boulle, a Paris-based college of art and applied art.
But he became interested in luxury and, as he put it, “for me, jewelry is the
most luxury activity.” It led him to earn a graduate degree in 1998 from the
Institut National de Gemmologie, about a mile northwest of where he works
today.
Before joining Chanel, he designed jewelry for 17 years at Cartier and Van
Cleef & Arpels. Certainly, heritage is an inherent part of his past employers’
jewelry, but Mr. Leguéreau says Chanel’s link with its past is unique.
“The heritage is more a spirit, a philosophy, and that creates for me more
freedom to create very contemporary and modern products,” he said. “That
gives more space to create. The spirit is very, very different.”
Mr. Leguéreau’s collections take between two and three years to create, but
he’s already planning something with a bit more notice: a collection for the
100th anniversary of Bijoux de Diamants.

6. “I’ve started thinking about the way I could celebrate this collection in 10
years,” he said, “to continue to be different, to surprise and to create
something new and modern.”
 Coco Chanel Golden Logo With Full Of Diamonds In Argyle
Background Bathroom Shower Curtain Set
 Coco Chanel Pink Parfum In Black And White Stripes Background
Bathroom Shower Curtain Set

7.  Coco Chanel Signature Logo With Black Leopard Print Bathroom
Shower Curtain Set

8.  Coco Chanel Signature Accessories Bathroom Shower Curtain Set

9.  Coco Chanel Logo In Red Roses Background Bathroom Shower
Curtain Set

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