Cast In Stone

As if making up for the low expectation due to a massively downsized exhibition this year, jewelry brands rallied with a scintillating array of new pieces.

- Pooja Agarwal

Baselworld is the platform for the whole industry, not only watches but also jewelry, gemstones, and related branches,” says Mr. Michel LorisMelikoff, managing director of Baselworld.

Participating brands brightened up the hall with jewelry and jewelry watches. Avant-garde designs took on innovative color combinations, forms, and materials. Here are some trends expected this year.

ABLAZE WITH COLOR

The show wowed with an abundance of sparkling stones. Jewel-encrusted timepieces and high jewelry were ablaze with colors.

In one mega-statement spectacle, multi-colored gemstones came together in this year’s most exciting jewelry watches. Displaying a variety of colored nuances, sapphires are spotted in several key pieces. The Rolex Oyster Perpetual Day-Date 36 in white gold has a beautiful gradation of baguette-cut sapphires in a spectrum of colors as hour indicators.

All colors of the rainbow come alive in Hublot’s Big Bang One Click Rainbow watch, further enhanced by the magenta shade of pink sapphires. The joyful watch translates eight pop colors with a variety of sparkling gemstones: rubies, pink sapphires, amethysts, blue sapphires, blue topazes, tsavorites, yellow sapphires, and orange sapphires.

The full-color spectrum is expressed through multicolored baguette-cut sapphires in shades ranging from orange to violet through yellow, green, blue and indigo in Chopard’s Imperiale Joaillerie Rainbow bejeweled watches, complemented with either a white or gray dial. The stones are meticulously sorted and set so that their colors blend in a subtle gradient inspired by the glistening reflections of sunshine after rain.

Chopard, Chanel, and Graff confirm two more color trends, one where significant-sized precious rare red rubies, blue sapphires and green emeralds in high jewelry dominate, and the other where yellow is extravagantly articulated with yellow diamonds.