Chaumet’s new chapter in a two-century love affair with nature
For Malaysian collectors watching the global haute joaillerie calendar, Chaumet high jewellery remains a bellwether of where taste is moving. With around 250 years of history and roots that stretch back to Empress Joséphine, the Parisian maison has long translated nature, birds and skies into regal adornment. This season, two distinct but complementary collections push that legacy forward. Journey Through Nature, a 46-piece suite by creative studio director Olga Corsini, swaps literal blossoms for the invisible sensations of tea fields, coffee steam and spices. In parallel, the Envol jewellery collection turns to the heavens, reimagining wings and flight in Chaumet’s signature blue through grand feu enamel and sapphires. Together, they show how top maisons are elevating everyday experiences and age-old celestial symbols into concept-driven jewels that feel closer to art and perfume than traditional ornament—an evolution that is increasingly resonant with sophisticated buyers in Southeast Asia.
Coffee, tea and spice: how Olga Corsini turns aromas into abstraction
Journey Through Nature is Chaumet’s most explicitly multi-sensory project yet, and the first high jewellery collection fully signed by Olga Corsini. Rather than sculpting recognisable camellia leaves or saffron petals, she works from aromas: the grassy lift of green tea, the warmth of coffee, the sweetness of vanilla, the brightness of mint and saffron’s floral glow. The Tea Field necklace centres on a 23.81-carat Colombian emerald that suggests plantation terraces seen from above, while geometric cascades of white diamonds, totalling 43.30 carats, stand in for water rather than literal foliage. In Coffee Aroma, Corsini refuses the obvious brown palette; instead, white sapphires and diamonds trace an abstract swirl of steam around a 12-carat oval stone, a construction that demanded 1,200 hours of workmanship. Sets like Mint Leaf, with 10 to 17-carat aquamarines and luminous pearls, rely on colour and temperature to evoke icy freshness, showing how taste and smell are now driving form and gemstone selection in coffee inspired jewellery and spice themed haute joaillerie.
Envol: wings, freedom and Chaumet’s signature blue in motion
If Journey Through Nature speaks to the senses, Envol speaks to the skies. The Envol jewellery collection continues a narrative Chaumet began with Les Ciels de Chaumet and Un Air de Chaumet, tracing the house’s long-standing fascination with birds and flight. Drawing from archives that reach back to the early 19th century and the Belle Époque, Envol reinterprets wings as symbols of freedom, self-affirmation and power, often associated with Napoleon’s eagle. Technically ambitious creations in white gold, grand feu enamel and midnight-blue Madagascar sapphires give the wing motif necklace and tiara a hypnotic depth. One highlight is an aigrette tiara whose enamelled wings shimmer with pavé diamonds and can be worn four ways, including as a mysterious mask or separated into brooches. Another transformable necklace, built around a 10.96-carat cushion sapphire, strips back to a pure V-shaped diamond line, underscoring Chaumet’s obsession with movement, versatility and the graphic silhouette of wings in flight.
Multi-sensory stories and cosmic themes: the new haute joaillerie language
Taken together, Chaumet’s two launches illuminate dominant currents in high jewellery. First is the shift toward multi-sensory inspiration, where designers start from taste, smell or atmosphere rather than figurative motifs. Journey Through Nature abandons obvious leaves and petals to bottle the idea of steam, warmth or minty chill in gemstone colours, textures and negative space. Second is the ongoing pull of the sky: Envol sits comfortably alongside recent celestial collections, but drills into a single symbol—wings—to explore themes of freedom, ascension and self-belief. Both rely heavily on grand feu enamel, a historic technique Chaumet is deliberately reviving, and on rare stones whose size and saturation justify their starring roles. For connoisseurs, this means pieces that behave like wearable stories or art objects; for brands, it marks a pivot away from simple florals toward more abstract, emotionally charged narratives rooted in the senses and the cosmos.
What it means for Southeast Asian collectors and future fine jewellery lines
For Southeast Asian collectors, where coffee culture, tea rituals and spice markets are part of daily life, Chaumet’s sensory turn feels particularly relevant. Journey Through Nature proves that coffee inspired jewellery and spice themed haute joaillerie can be ultra-luxurious without being literal or folkloric, opening the door for future fine jewellery lines that use abstract colour blocking, enamel and unusual gem pairings to suggest flavours and aromas. Envol, meanwhile, taps into a regional affinity for sky and bird symbolism—freedom, migration, aspiration—through wing motifs that could easily be simplified into everyday pendants, a wing motif necklace in white gold, or stackable rings. The maison’s renewed emphasis on transformable pieces and revived craftsmanship also sets expectations: even more accessible collections are likely to focus on versatility and narrative, allowing aspirational buyers to own a distilled fragment of these museum-level ideas while still feeling connected to Chaumet’s grand, nature-driven story.