Where the Wild Things Are

The beauty of Boucheron's latest Histoire de Style collection, Untamed Nature, lies in its earnest homage to nature. Creative director CLAIRE CHOISNE takes Charmaine Ho behind the scenes.

Boucheron is a jeweller that does not care much for conventionality. While this is a statement that many luxury houses would readily claim, few have tangible proof of just how little they care about doing things the usual way—unlike Boucheron, who demonstrates this regularly. Not just with the radical, unorthodox materials that feature prominently within its high jewellery collections, but also in the way that the Parisian Maison chooses to unveil its high jewellery collections annually.

Every January, Boucheron kicks off the year with its Histoire de Style collection, which delves into the brand's 167-year archives for ageless designs undertaken with an unmistakably modern eye. Then, it marks the middle of the year with its Carte Blanche collection that, as its name suggests, throws all rules out the window with an extravagant point of view that takes joy in being off the wall. That's not to say that the jewels found within the former are any less noteworthy. As this year's Histoire de Style collection proves, they are anything but.

Aptly named Untamed Nature, the collection features 28 transformable designs that allow for no less than 116 different ways of wearing them. The Airelles (or lingonberries) necklace, for example, features a system of articulation that lets it bend and mould its diamond-encrusted form to the body with seamless fluidity while allowing it to be taken apart to form a cascading brooch or several smaller brooches. (The necklace took 3,600 hours to produce.)