How high jewellery designers fell for retro culture: from Coco Chanel’s 30s Jazz Age collection, to Tiffany & Co. and Piaget’s love for the 70s disco era, and Boucheron and Stephen Webster embracing the 80s

Dec 28 , 2023

How high jewellery designers are being inspired by retro culture: from Coco Chanel’s 30s Jazz Age collection, to Tiffany & Co. and Piaget drawing on the 70s, and Boucheron and Stephen Webster the 80s. Pictured: Boucheron More Is More, This Is Not a Ring. Photos: Handout

Going 1980s retro, high jewellery maison Boucheron references the Rubik’s Cube, New Wave and Milanese design collective The Memphis Group, while Stephen Webster channels the New Romantic movement

Tiffany & Co. and Piaget are drawing inspiration from the decadence and vibrancy of the 70s, while Chanel is looking all the way back to the Jazz Age with its ‘1932’ collection of haute joaillerie

Fashion typically operates in 20-year cycles. That’s why, in the 1990s, Tom Ford was so successful with reviving disco style, and why, in the present day, we’re seeing a renaissance of trends from the Y2K era of the early 2000s – think glitzy minidresses, low-rise boot-cut denim, and midriff-bearing crop-tops.

Things move a little more slowly in the world of jewellery. In this rarefied realm, the retro focus is just now beginning to fall on the 1980s – at least, if the latest collection from Boucheron is anything to go by. Entitled More is More, this new array of bijoux from creative director Claire Choisne draws its primary inspiration from revolutionary Milanese design collective The Memphis Group.

Boucheron More Is More collection, In The Pocket and An Apple a Day bracelet

Led by Ettore Sottsass, and most active from 1980 to 1987, Memphis trafficked in bold, postmodern designs featuring jagged shapes, and bright and often jarring colours – Bauhaus with a dash of MTV – and a poppy aesthetic akin to the surf and skate style of the day.

For the More is More collection, Choisne riffed on these motifs and 1980s cultural touch points such as the Rubik’s Cube (which inspires a bejewelled necklace), the badges affixed to denim jackets by New Wave teens (reworked into precious brooches), and plastic hair bobbles (transformed into funky lacquer, titanium and white-gold rings).

Patrice Leguéreau embarked on the challenging feat of rendering tweed into jewellery form for the Tweed de Chanel collection

She has also created a daring magnesium and diamond hair bow that resembles the large-scale 80s pop art sculptures of Roy Lichtenstein, and a gem-encrusted, fully functional pocket in 3D-printed titanium that can be attached magnetically to almost any item of attire. Another piece intended to elevate an otherwise everyday garment is Choisne’s hoodie string adornment (also functional as earrings), in a rainbow of materials including diamonds, lacquer, onyx, opal, gold and titanium.

Speaking to the Post, Choisne said of the 165-year-old Parisian maison she helms creatively: “We’re the oldest and first jeweller on Place Vendôme – but we’re a fun grandmother.