Gabrielle Chanel redrew the parameters of women’s dressing with her embrace of unexpected fabrics and silhouettes. Physically active (she rode horses, skied, and played tennis and golf), she translated her love of sport into her clothing, introducing an ease of movement, with materials such as jersey, which prefaced the opening of her first sport atelier in 1921.
Patrice Leguéreau, director of Chanel’s Fine Jewellery Creation Studio, nods to this championing of easy-to-wear, streamlined silhouettes in the design of the brand’s new high jewellery collection, Haute Joaillerie Sport. Inspired by Gabrielle’s study of how sportswear is worn close to the body, here Leguéreau’s supple jewellery eschews a restrictive fit, designed instead to freely drape. As with the clothes, here, too, we see an unexpected combination of materials woven throughout, from lusciously light aluminium to carbon fibre and lacquer in black, red and blue, in a mirroring of the bold colours of the precious stones.
Haute Joaillerie Sport
These colourful gemstones illustrate some of Gabrielle’s favourite motifs, including the lion and the star. Elsewhere, distinctive Chanel design details are abundant, from a carabiner in the shape of the number ‘5’ to the swivel clasp synonymous with the ‘2.55’ bag, here given a jewellery spin, as is the humble sports cord, which becomes a tube chain dangling from a lattice of diamonds. The familiar Chanel quilting, meanwhile, pays tribute to the flexible nature of hard-working sports fabrics, taking the form of a fluid mesh.
Other pieces also borrow from the sports world, with quick-release fittings becoming fastenings, and buckles and loops making for unusual new additions to the high jewellery anthology. It’s a winning collection.
This article appears in the November 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
