The new Traforato necklace form the En Equilibre collection.
The official High Jewelry showings in January and July in Paris align with the Haute Couture. Both attract a similar customer: a discerning client with superior tastes and deep pockets. The Cannes Film Festival is also where these categories flourish in visibility, especially the high jewelry, which has used the high-profile event to promote their exquisite and expensive creations on the Red Carpet. Cartier is no exception, with this season boasting styles on Elle Fanning, Catherine Deneuve, and Gong Li. However, to introduce its 115-piece “En Equilibre” collection, the Place Vendôme jewelry house explored a new region, Stockholm, Sweden, where they unveiled the collection.
To celebrate, the brand hosted a formal gala evening at Artipelag art gallery on the waters of the archipelago. The celebration festivities began in Stockholm proper with an exhibition of the collection in the historic Nacka Strandmässen industrial building featuring an open sky vista where guests witness Maison’s expert artisans demonstrate the savoir-faire behind the Panthère Dentelée necklace.
Highlights of the new collections include The Tsagaan necklace, which features a subtly discernible image of a snow leopard—whose coat makes it hard to spot in the wild— which is mimicked in the diamond and black onyx necklace with an angular design that comes to a point in the center where the face of the elusive big cat appears. Three octagonal emeralds inspired the Traforato necklace, which also has a sharp design motif with a setting that resembles a zig-zag and a cascade of round diamonds hanging from diamond and emerald baguettes. Two shield-cut diamonds inspire the Skudo ring with a graphic and balanced appearance, reaching a point at the ring top.
Guests such as friends of the Maison Zoe Saldaña and Swede Alexander Skarsgard, brand ambassadors Deepika Padukone and Anna Sawai, and other VIP attendees were ferried by boat to the art museum that combines architecture and nature.
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The Tsagaan necklace from Cartier.
According to a collection release, En Equilibre echoes the design space with a visual harmony that balances colors, length, and volume and ‘the space between full and empty and symmetry and asymmetry.’ Stockholm also expressed the equilibrium, where creativity and design evoke the balance between urban life and nature and innovation and tradition. Its balance recalls a ‘sense of minimalism or lagom: neither too much nor too little.’
The High Jewelry pieces were showcased in a ‘tableaux vivant’—models dressed in Giambattista Valli’s Prêt-à- designs lead the way to the gala dinner. The evening continued with a performance devised by the Canadian rock band The Beaches and a DJ set by Dorion Fiszel.
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