A cubist version of the camellia? It’s in the Sunset necklace from Chanel’s latest high jewelry collection, called Café Society, inspired by a way of life that united aristocrats and artists from all over the world from the Twenties to the Sixties. Presented during Paris Fashion Week at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the necklace evokes the season of the Ballets Russes and the music of Igor Stravinsky, with the intention of reproducing the same disruptive effect in the world of jewelry. The iconic symbols of the maison, such as stars and lions, are missing, but the jewels hang from the ceiling like dancers backstage and the star of the evening was a necklace with a 12-carat yellow diamond that took 1,200 hours to produce and whose price was set at almost 2 million euros. The flavor of the roaring decades of the early twentieth century lives on in the contrast between black and white of the diamonds and onyx that reproduces the pentagram of the Symphony line and in the diamond fringes of the Charleston line. And, again, rock crystal tiles set in rectangular settings in white gold and diamonds, surrounded by the colors of blue and yellow sapphires, spinels, garnets and orange tsavorites. Jewels to wear depending on the time of day: Midnight, Morning in Vendôme, Broadway, Charleston, Symphony and Sunset are the Cafè Society lines that correspond to as many hours.
