hroughout the centuries, jewellers have pursued a common goal to seize beauty that is destined to vanish and render it eternal. An ear of wheat blown by the wind, a butterfly’s iridescent wing as it takes flight, the force of a crashing wave or the brilliance of a starry sky. Since Antiquity, nature at its most fragile and delicate has inspired jewellers. This loyal muse was at the heart of the collections revealed over the course of summer.

Nature the eternal muse

“When the earliest jewels came into being, at the same time as civilisations, the first reflex was to look for themes in nature,” noted Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s image, style and heritage director, in an interview. Already, the ancient Greeks and Romans crafted jewellery in the form of animals and sculpted finely detailed ivy leaves from gold. The story of jewellery is replete with tributes to the natural world.

Cartier En Équilibre High Jewellery collection, Panthere Orbitale necklace

The period from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries was particularly fruitful. Houses such as Chaumet and Boucheron transformed nature’s bounty into magnificent parures. This naturalism reached its highest form in the early 1900s, in Art Nouveau. With extraordinary mastery, René Lalique, Georges Fouquet and Vever rendered the dragonfly’s gossamer wings or a delicate leaf in crumpled gold, enamel, gemstones, pearls and plique-à-jour enamel.

Chaumet Jewels by Nature, Fairy Iris brooch

Alongside the plant world, animals are no less of an inspiration. Over decades, Cartier has assembled a flamboyant menagerie of panthers, parrots and crocodiles. In the 1950s, Van Cleef & Arpels unleashed a pack of cheerful, playful animal figures, while tending to a well-stocked garden of floral brooches in precious gems.

Continuing in this vein, the high jewellery collections presented over summer 2025 were an unreserved tribute to nature, from the earth to the skies above.

Nature, the messenger

At Boucheron, creative director Claire Choisne’s Impermanence collection comprises six compositions of multiple jewellery pieces in arrangements inspired by the art of ikebana. One of these compositions uses Vantablack®, the blackest black that absorbs almost all light and a material rarely harnessed in jewellery. Impermanence is a delicate reminder of the fleeting beauty of the world.

Boucheron Carte Blanche Impermanence, Composition N° 6

Described as “a tribute to the treasures of flora and fauna”, Chaumet’s Jewels by Nature collection captures natural wonders in three chapters: Everlasting, Ephemeral and Reviving. From the humble oat or fern to the aristocratic iris and magnolia, each piece celebrates the fragility and resilience of nature.

Stones in all their splendour

For the twentieth anniversary of her brand, Valérie Messika evokes African landscapes with Terres d’Instinct. A journey to Namibia, where many exceptional diamonds originate, inspired her to capture the desert’s relentless light and rippling shadows, and transform them into jewels. The collection’s hero piece is the Kalahara necklace, set with a 34-carat fancy intense yellow diamond centre stone which is, in itself, an ode to nature.

Messika Terres d’Instinct High Jewellery collection, Kalahara necklace set with a 34-carat fancy intense yellow diamond centre stone

On the subject of gems, coloured stones claim the starring role in Bvlgari’s Polychroma collection. Unveiled in Taormina in Italy, the 600 pieces include 250 entirely new high jewellery creations. Among them, five exceptional pieces adorned with rare stones form the Gallery of Wonders. One, the Celestial Mosaic necklace, looks to the eighth-century Tree of Life mosaic from Jericho. Its centre stone is a 131.21-carat spinel, the fourth-largest spinel in the world and the first in terms of quality: a gift from deep within Earth.

Bvlgari Polychroma High Jewellery collection. Celestial Mosaic necklace with a central 131.21-carat spinel from Tajikistan, inspired by Jericho’s eighth-century Tree of Life mosaic

©Buonomo & Cometti

Stars and gardens

Elsewhere, Chanel exalts the beauty of comets, the poetry of wings and the lion’s strength in the Reach for the Stars collection, presented in Kyoto in June and in Paris in July. Patrice Leguéreau, the late director of Chanel’s Fine Jewellery Creation Studio, set out to capture the golden hour, when the sun dips below the horizon and the sky is emblazoned with colour.

Chanel Reach for the Stars High Jewellery Collection, Five Wings brooch

Victoire de Castellane chose Château de la Colle Noire, Christian Dior’s retreat in southern France, to unveil the Diorexquis collection. Dreamlike jewels are testament to the couturier’s love of roses and gardens.

Presented in Paris at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Rosina collection by Pasquale Bruni is an evocation of the founder’s family home, abandoned by humans and reclaimed by wild-growing nature. Returning to her native village, creative director Eugenia Bruni discovered a rose blooming among this vegetation and transformed it into a curated collection of jewellery set with diamonds, rubies and pink sapphires. “I chose the rose because it represents strength,” she says. Rosina stands out as a manifestation of nature’s ability to thrive.

From Piaget’s Shapes of Extraleganza High Jewellery Collection, a cuff reinterprets the Yves Piaget Rose in feathers, a collaboration with Nelly Saunier

Piaget channels the 1960s with a collection centred around geometric compositions of hardstones and diamonds. Debuting at Paris Haute Couture Week, it features a remarkable piece inspired by the Yves Piaget Rose, thus named in 1982. Designed by creative director Stéphanie Sivrière, it is a collaboration with plumasserie artist Nelly Saunier, blending spinels and diamonds with feathers. A versatile piece, the rose can be detached from the cuff and worn as a brooch. Only its fragrance is missing.

The animal realm

The collection that Chopard revealed at the Cannes Film Festival in May is no doubt the most personal of all. Its name? Caroline’s Universe. With it, Caroline Scheufele tells of her love of flowers and animals, already evident in the gardens that surround her home, on the shores of Lake Geneva, which she shares with numerous dogs. Indeed, who should appear among the collection’s peacocks, parrots, pandas and hippopotami but Byron, her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, portrayed on a ring in white, black and cognac diamonds. The collection paints a sensitive portrait of Chopard’s co-president and artistic director: “Each piece of jewellery is a stage; each precious stone tells a story in which the art of jewellery reflects both my personal journey and universal emotion.”

From the Chopard Red Carpet Collection ’Caroline’s Universe’, a rose, a peony and Byron, Caroline’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Cartier has named its latest collection En Équilibre. “The paradox of sophisticated simplicity is to create a clear and obvious line through its sobriety,” states Jacqueline Karachi, director of high jewellery. Helping achieve this equilibrium, several of the House’s celebrated animals make an appearance on the Panthère Orbitale, Panthère Dentelée and Tsagaan necklaces, the latter an evocation of a snow leopard, while Pavocelle looks to the form of a peacock’s fanned tail. Each piece strikes the fine balance between geometry and the animal’s presence.

Through the 2025 high jewellery collections, and the craftsmanship that brings them to life, nature becomes a symbolic language, a personal message, even a manifesto for the environment. It is revealed as fragile, indomitable and, we truly hope, eternal.