When her first child was born in 2015, Charlotte Chesnais’s husband presented her with an unset 1ct diamond that had belonged to his grandmother, to work into a piece of her choice. “It was one of the first stones that really got in my head,” says the Parisian designer, who had launched her demi-fine sculptural jewellery brand during the pregnancy. “It became a tool to understand scale and proportion, and it gave me a kind of intuition about what a fine diamond ring in my own creative language could be.”
A decade on, Chesnais has made her first big foray into fine jewellery. Made-to-order 1ct diamond rings in her signature swirling style are front and centre of her brand’s collection.
The timing was no accident. Jewellery is no longer merely a buoyant outlier in an extraordinarily tough climate for luxury: the mid-year financial results from Richemont, Kering and LVMH reveal that it has taken on the mantle of driving growth. And despite material costs being at an all-time high, a cohort of independent contemporary jewellers such as Chesnais are finding themselves positioned to tap into the booming demand for the 1ct diamond ring.
Jessie Thomas gold and 0.82ct oval diamond Wide Curve ring, £6,850 © Andrew Vowles
