Each season, alongside Paris’s prodigious haute couture shows – the zenith of fashion – comes the unveiling of the fresh-from-the-atelier high jewellery collections. And last week, the industry’s best in the biz, with their extraordinary adornment offerings, did everything except disappoint. From Dior’s modular creations to Chaumet’s birds of flight, here we catalog the best high jewellery offerings to come out of couture week. Prepare for glitz, glam and a whole lot of technical glory. Emily Phillips
Dior
Victoire de Castellane’s Belle Dior haute joaillerie collection for 2026 treats Dior’s heritage as something active, not ornamental. Comprising 57 pieces, the collection centres on movement – jewellery designed to sway, convert and respond to the body, borrowing its logic from couture as much as from the garden.
Braiding, a signature of de Castellane’s work, is pushed into vertical forms that hang and fringe rather than sit flat. These elongated pendants and articulated lines recall the swing of Dior’s ball gowns or the upward pull of a flowering stem. Gold, diamonds and coloured gemstones are arranged to suggest growth and lightness, creating a flora that feels constructed rather than literal.
Symbolism takes centre stage in Soleil Céleste, a set inspired by Monsieur Christian Dior’s interest in divination. Yellow diamonds form radiant points, while stars and moons carved from black opal doublets rest on turquoise. The pieces are deliberately versatile: a bracelet becomes a choker, a brooch doubles as a hair ornament, each transformation handled with restraint.
Elsewhere, Jardins Multicolores reappears in bright green and powder pink, while Dearest Dior gains depth through tanzanite. The collection culminates in a ring set with a 6.50k pink spinel, cut to shift from cushion to flower – an understated statement of de Castellane’s precise, restless approach to high jewellery. EP
Cartier
Cartier’s En Équilibre high jewellery collection is an exercise in control wherein balance is not treated as an abstract idea but as a discipline – of line, volume, colour and space. Nothing is added without purpose, meaning symmetry and asymmetry coexist, simplicity edges toward complexity and precision keeps everything in check.
This approach runs through the key necklaces. Euphonia brings together two rare, perfectly matched batches of rubies and diamonds, united by emerald cuts that give the piece its graphic clarity. Square, baguette and brilliant-cut diamonds sharpen the rhythm, while a sliding clasp at the back allows the double strand to move and adjust, reinforcing the sense of fluid structure. With Splendea, Cartier pushes restraint further, arranging matched diamonds into a continuous ribbon of light. Almost imperceptible settings create the sensation of an uninterrupted wave, driven by meticulous construction rather than visual excess. Parcae distills the idea of “nothing in excess” to its core: three pear-shaped Madagascar sapphires, totalling 16.59k, align at the necklace’s centre, anchored by diamond strands cut to introduce tension and movement. Colour takes a more expressive turn in Ondora, where chrysoprase, spinels and turquoise are balanced against diamonds in a composition inspired by the drifting motion of jellyfish. Light, mobile and transformable, the necklace reveals Cartier’s technical mastery while remaining rigorously composed – a study in harmony held firmly in place. EP
Chaumet
Chaumet takes to the sky with its new capsule collection Envol. In its nearly 250 years of history, the 12 Place Vendome maison’s dialogue with its French royal heritage has never ceased to deliver true gems of savoir-faire (pun intended). The initial alchemy that brought forth the partnership between Marie-Etienne Nitot, Chaumet’s founder, and Empress Josephine Bonaparte, was a shared fascination with the natural world. Their predilection? Birds – at once a symbol of power and elegance.
It is in the maison’s archival bird-inspired neo-antique style tiaras that the 2026 Envol collection found its inspiration. The aigrette tiara, capable of being worn four different ways, glitters with brilliant-cut pavé diamonds adorning a pair of grand feu enamel wings. Equally versatile is the pavé diamond white gold necklace adorned with a 10.96k, cushion-cut Madagascar sapphire. Glowing with its strongly contrasting dégradé of blues, the piece required over 650 hours of work to manufacture, but takes only a second to fall in love with. With its nine new majestic winged figures, Chaumet flies straight to the peak of greatness. Cecilia Nuvola Bechini
Bvlgari
Bvlgari has one of the most awe-inspiring archives in the landscape of high jewellery, and its latest offering has cracked it open to glorious avail. Entitled Bvlgari Icons Minaudière, the collection marks Bvlgari’s first-ever dedicated evening accessories line. Exploring the dialogue between jewellery created in the past compared to now, creative director Mary Katrantzou has incorporated the Roman house’s time-honoured codes into a series of objet d’arts that strike the balance between shining jewels and opulent accessories. Reimagining five distinct symbols from Bvlgari’s history – Monete, Serpenti, Tubogas, Divas’ Dream and Bvlgari Bvlgari – each piece adapts high jewellery techniques, like hand enameling and pavé settings to create small, decorative handbags (or minaudières). A beautiful marriage between heritage and contemporary design, the offering is Bvlgari doing what it does best – pushing the boundaries to create something exquisite. Bella Koopman
Graff
Water, and its fluid, rippling beauty, has long inspired those who create works of art. This season, there’s a new, glittering addition to this canon. Graff, the British heritage jeweller, turned to “the moment a single droplet meets a still, iridescent pool of water” as the foundation for its latest high jewellery collection. Comprised of a pair of earrings and a wide-band choker, Graff’s skilled artisans have turned this moment of natural grace into a shimmering symphony of sculptural artistry. The choker is the hero piece. In its centre sits a rare 31k sapphire, chiselled to perfection into the surrounding mosaic of square-cut diamonds. Smaller sapphires are peppered across the rest of the band, whimsically positioned to emulate the delicate splash of the single droplet that started it all. It’s a poetic ode to nature’s dichotomy and how it can be equal parts delicate and fierce. The same spirit is embraced for the design of the earrings, although this time the sapphire droplets splash upwards. Powerful in both presence and message, this is high jewellery at its towering peak. BK
Messika
In July of last year, Messika unveiled its exquisitely exotic jewellery collection, Terres D’Instinct. Inspired by Namibia, where beyond golden sand dunes and burning winds, zebras and lions roam, the rich assemblage celebrated 20 years of the brand’s ethical creations.
This year, the brand delivers four fresh jewellery suites, building off of the original Terres D’Instinct offering. Zooming out, the first iteration takes inspiration from the deep rosy-red hue of Namibian skies at dusk. Also inspired by the Art Deco movement, the Groove Necklace boasts a hypnotically rhythmic arrangement of over 4000 diamonds and 43k. Designed for modular wear, the neck piece is made up of a choker and sautoir that can be worn separately or together.
Next up is Magnetique, a shorter necklace of 3057 diamants and one 3.52k brilliant-cut diamond. Inspired by the fairy circles of Southern Africa’s landscape, the stones are set in a diamond rivière. Also available as a bracelet boasting 1277 diamonds or 26.12k, the radiant design aims to capture the power of attraction.
The Divine Enigma pavé choker, meanwhile, sets its sights on the Namibian desert night sky. Like an infinite constellation, the piece features snow settings and a singular pendant drop set with an 18.88k oval-cut diamond.
Seeing off the collection, the Velvet Rope line – a choker, a necklace and a pair of earrings – offers an escape from normality. Sinuous strands of golden tiger’s eye make their debut at the maison, intermingling with diamonds for a feline piece inspired by Africa’s mineral heat. Fi Munday
De Beers
With Vibrations, De Beers unveils its latest array of high jewellery, inspired by the “quiet yet inspiring forces of inland water”. Emulating the shape and natural beauty of meandering streams and cascading waterfalls, the new collection interprets the eternal allure of the great outdoors through peerlessly polished diamonds and precious metals.
It features four sets of diamond-adorned pieces, each dedicated to their places of origin – Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Canada – and their respective bodies of water. The collection’s cornerstone is Echo, a capsule of five resplendent designs evoking water’s hypnotic fluidity and sunlit glimmer. At its heart lies a showstopping necklace set with a rare 1.12k blue Zambian diamond. Its bright, brilliant blue hue mirrors the waters of Zambia’s Fish River, posing a striking contrast to the 193ks of baguette-cut white diamonds clustered around it. A first of its kind feat for the London-based high jewellery house, the necklace is a work of technical sophistication – with expertly articulated draping that snakes around one’s neck just like a rambling river. Adding to its already impressive complexity is its transformative, modular ability to be engineered into a contemporary tiara, a diamond bracelet or into a pair of luxurious earrings, via its detachable tassels. Crafted using artisanally mined diamonds discovered by independent artisans on ancient riverbeds in Sierra Leone, its symbolic designs and materials signal nature’s continuity, vitality and abstract beauty.
Vibrations’ Riverborn series traces the river’s source through a dozen unique sculptural pieces before culminating in Modern Lines, which draws from De Beers signature Diamond Lines, combining polished round diamonds and portrait-shaped rough diamonds with discreet white-gold fil couteau links in a series of necklaces, bracelets and drop earrings. Set using a unique ‘spectacle’ technique, the diamonds appear to float like water droplets on the skin, recalling the fluid movement of the rivers in which they were discovered. The one-of-a-kind pavé-set Toi et Moi ring’s curvaceous shape also recalls a river, and entices with intertwining satin-finished white-gold bands complete with Florentine engraving. Ella O’Gorman
Top image: photography courtesy of Chaumet.
