A THING OF BEAUTY
Marianne Etchebarne, Chanel’s global head of watches and fine jewellery product marketing and communication, talks about the creative process behind its high jewellery pieces
What kind of message does the Coromandel high jewellery collection convey?
Globally, Chanel’s message to our clients and the press is our strong creativity and also the freedom of our creativity. Every six months, we have a new collection and it shows that our capacity to surprise, even though the creations are steeped in our DNA, is indeed d our biggest strength.
How does Chanel’s creativity ity stand out from the rest of the competition?
Our creativity is different—we’re ’re not enclosed in patrimony. Yes, es, we want to remain faithful to the design codes of the house, but our advantage is youth. Gabrielle Chanel is youth. She gave vision to our jewellery, but we have complete freedom to do what we want. There are hundreds of ways of interpreting the coromandel screens. For us, the page is white each time. We usually work two years ahead of time, with more than six months spent to define the collection. The creation studio has churned out about 800 drawings for the collection, and to choose the designs—that’s the best part of the job.
How did you decide which drawings work, and which don’t?
We look at the drawings, compare it to our brand image and then we look at our business analysis. For each collection, we keep it at about 60 pieces, just so that we have room to play with price points and various functionalities in the pieces. Sometimes, the studios come with drawings that aren’t feasible to manufacture o or the price is too high for the piece to be made. We discuss further and then we finalise the drawings before we look for the stones.
How did the creative team prepare itself for designing the Coromandel C collection?
The T team spent one full day da in Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment ap looking at the coromandel cor screens. We got closer clos to the imaginary world in the s screens and looked at the birds and flowers. We agreed that the pieces shouldn’t be litera literal interpretations of the artw artwork on the screens.
We n noticed that more coloured l gemstones are used in the Coromandel collection. Is Chanel ready to break out from black and white?
Chanel is all about white and black; our roots are really white and black. But little by little, we discover that we actually have colour in our roots: our red lipsticks and the colours used in our fashion line. We had some colour in our previous high jewellery collections and the response was good. That’s why we felt it was time for us to introduce coloured gems into our collection and our studio is now well-equipped with the skills to acquire quality gems.