Ever since Jean-Marc Mansvelt took the helm of Chaumet in 2015, he’s been on a mission to wake the historic French jewelry house from slumber.

The home has actually been stretching its legs. Industry sources estimate Chaumet has reached around 450 million euros in reveues, exceeding pre-pandemic levels, although its parent group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton doesn’t break out the corporate’s results.

Straight away its famous tiaras are selling like gem-encrusted hot cakes, starting at just shy of fifty,000 euros for ornaments that hew toward headbands, heading to 150,000 euros to have laurels unfurling across one’s brow and from there to the “sky’s the limit” budget of bespoke designs.

And 2024 might see this not-so-Sleeping Beauty hit the bottom running. Between iconic designs and the visibility of making the medals for the upcoming Paris Summer Olympics, Mario Ortelli, managing partner of the luxurious advisory firm Ortelli&Co., was positive in regards to the brand and said it “can have ambitions to develop significantly.”

While the home “doesn’t have the ambition to be in all places,” Mansvelt feels the time is ripe for “the one pure player out there” — it only has jewels and a handful of jewellery timepieces — to step out with gusto.

Here, the executives talks with WWD about why not being worn by everyone seems to be the home’s “key to enter anywhere,” what door it plans to open next and hints that a tiara may very well be best paired with an influence suit.

WWD: What number of tiaras are sold lately?

Jean-Marc Mansvelt: We’re around 100 pieces per 12 months. What’s much more interesting recently is that we actually have effervescence around special orders and never just from royal families. We are sometimes at the guts of a private and familial history.

After I first arrived [in 2015], I could see their symbolic value but wondered why someone would wear one 1700120415, what made a tiara contemporary. Seeing people go for them today is great.

WWD: How is a tiara different to other kinds of high jewelry pieces?

J.-M.M.: As a rule of thumb, there’s a symbolic aspect of power or of affection, of attachment. Tiaras are objects of meaning, not a fashion. 

One client desired to have a good time the undeniable fact that her son and daughter-in-law had finally had a son after three daughters. The design, which took almost two years to develop and includes the family crest, is an exceptional piece that required almost 2,000 hours of labor and includes some 1,800 diamonds. But above all, it’s an emblem of that family being built.

There’s something transformative in a tiara, too. While just as beautiful as other jewels, it carries something more. Through millennia of history, crown-like objects have signified this connection between the earth and the sky. Someone wearing a tiara changes posture, it’s relatively spectacular.

WWD: Who orders a tiara in 2023?

J.-M.M.: Several kinds of occasions call for tiaras. Probably the most classic is parents purchasing or ordering for a daughter’s wedding and we see there the symbolic and historical dimension, connected to the connection between Napoléon [Bonaparte] and Joséphine [de Beauharnais], history with a capital H, transmission and investment. We see those sorts of orders [coming] quite a bit from Asia, also within the Middle East.

Then you could have powerful women, for whom the diadem becomes the materialization of power. Shortly after my arrival, we delivered a bespoke design with spinels to a Hong Kong-based businesswoman — who has since ordered several more — where there was this real idea of a crown of claiming, “I am going to my board meetings bearing a visible reminder of the ability I wield.”

WWD: Are they an entry point for brand new high jewelry clients?

J.-M.M.: proportion of those purchases are by women for themselves, amongst clients from Asia and the Middle East. One example that involves mind is a 25-year-old Chinese customer who ordered a diadem to mark the tip of her university education.

Special orders for those aren’t the primary purchase of a client, they sometimes [represent] the deepening of an already established relationship — and we’ve got quite a lot of clients who’ve done several.

But clients have bought a design we presented [as part of a collection], like this necessary high jewelry client who spotted a spectacular diadem from our exhibition within the Forbidden City in 2017, set with yellow and white diamonds, at 12 Place Vendôme and purchased it on the spot for an event she had that week.

WWD: Is that this popularity a recent development or has it at all times been there?

J.-M.M.: There was [constant] demand and we had began to [offer] more but that increase can be attributed to their presence within the boutique concepts that was rolled out starting in 2017. As an incarnation of the home, I absolutely wanted the diadem to be physically present [in store], so people could see the objects with their true volume and find a way to try them on.

It’s at all times been a crucial a part of the business for Chaumet but 2021, 2022 and 2023 have truly been record years, where we’ve got seen from 50 to 100% growth within the variety of tiaras sold.

WWD: Has the interest in that category brought growth in others?

J.-M.M.: It’s difficult to quantify but tiaras ennoble the home immensely and are a concrete summary of [its history]. Unquestionably it helps for, say, the Joséphine collection, transposing that design to the finger as a hoop. Having [that design] in your finger to have a good time your love makes for an original alternative but in addition anchors to the large story, creating very strong symbolism.

WWD: Why placed on near concurrently the boldness of “A Golden Age, 1965-1985” in Paris and “Tiara Dream,” an exhibition held in September in Shanghai with a more historical start line?

J.-M.M.: What I at all times wish to showcase is that a jewellery house, and Chaumet specifically, isn’t a creation in a void. What’s necessary for us is to precise that we aren’t only a house of France’s First Empire period [under Napoléon Bonaparte] — we’d have long disappeared if we had fossilized.

At every period, there may be a connection to the world around us and that’s also true of tiaras. On the turn of the twentieth century, it was relatively crown-like nevertheless it became aigrette-like as silhouettes turn out to be more streamlined and so forth.

The ‘60s and ‘70s period [covered by “A Golden Age”] is interesting since it shows that this house that’s supposedly very traditional kept doing what it did best but in addition created a novel retail concept to try things out and address a social revolution. But pieces like those of [jeweler Pierre] Sterlé — with this golden hair that moves] may not have come to life without two centuries of know-how and jeweler history.

WWD: Does heritage assist in today’s volatile context?

J.-M.M.: For us, things are going relatively well. We’re in a market dynamic where Chaumet isn’t a lot a grand old lady as an awoken sleeping beauty who stays very recent for a overwhelming majority. That’s a possibility.

The jewellery market has significantly developed and we’ve got a growing place, due to representing an alternate for clients who want something different that others aren’t wearing yet.

Contexts are uncertain and volatile, of course, but we’re on “jewelry time.” While every single day is different, we’ve got markets which can be overperforming on a unprecedented scale, like Japan and the Middle East, with high double-digit growth rates.

WWD: To what do you attribute this success?

J.-M.M.: Re-centering on local markets and clients, which we effected throughout the pandemic, has been a crucial shock absorber. That enabled us to construct a rather more solid, rather more necessary local business. In each regions, it’s local customers which can be driving business.

That said, we’re keenly aware that the environment isn’t 100% favorable so we’ve got shelved or postponed projects. Nobody knows what’s going to occur in three or six months.

Greater than ever, we’ve got to be flexible and keep our ear to the bottom while not getting swept away [by the conjuncture]. We still talk of beauty, creation, know-how, eternity — relatively interesting things.

WWD: What’s an important marketplace for Chaumet?

J.-M.M.: China stays a significant marketplace for us, nevertheless it’s now turn out to be an area market. Here, too, consumers are more local than touristic, which wasn’t the case pre-2019. That’s the best change.

That said, our network in China isn’t as developed as a few of our major competitors so there’s also a notion of selectivity that offers us opportunities that we’ll seize — or not — in coming years.

WWD: Beyond the macroeconomic and geopolitical context, what about challenges in the jewellery supply chain?

J.-M.M.: To be clear, sourcing certain kinds of stones, including hard stones, will be a difficulty. It’s not only availability but in addition, at what price can we get them? Prices have gone up tremendously. Clients’ knowledge levels have evolved they usually have a superb idea [of what materials are worth on average], particularly in high jewelry.

What we’ve got done is proceed to explore a path of objects that aren’t just in regards to the stones but in addition call on kaleidoscopes or shades of colours, pushing our creative range as wide as possible. That’s an asset.

That’s also something that “The Golden Age” goals to reveal: Chaumet has at all times known the right way to take those side steps without falling into extravagance or provocation.

WWD: What other markets are you taking a look at?

J.-M.M.: Today, our sights are set on South Asia, where we aren’t and is a big market. We’ve had a retail presence in Singapore for some time and entered Australia in 2018, where we’ve got been doing thoroughly and recently opened our first stand-alone store on Sydney’s Pitt Street.

But inside the following six to eight months, we’re going to open Malaysia, by the tip of the 12 months; then Vietnam, followed next 12 months by [an opening in] Bangkok, Thailand, and Indonesia.

WWD: What in regards to the U.S.?

J.-M.M.: It stays a particularly complex market and one which requires more muscle than we’ve got today. It isn’t a straightforward gold mine, a costly market that requires a protracted time to mature.

Taking a look at the brands which can be successful there, international or American, they’re very different from the Chaumet style.

That’s to not say American clients aren’t thinking about Chaumet. Proof is that they’re the most important contingent at 12 Vendôme in recent months. And once you have a look at the books, we aren’t missing any of the distinguished American [families] for the reason that end of the nineteenth century. Some U.S.-based collectors have even loaned pieces for the exhibition.

At the identical time, we aren’t completely absent since we’ve got quite a lot of requests from American clients through e-commerce or calls to our Paris boutiques and we’ve got had some superb orders.

The reply is perhaps beginning to put down pieces of Chaumet narration [in the U.S.] and seeing how the market responds to get the important thing to the following step.

WWD: So it’s about installing the culture of Chaumet before adding product?

J.-M.M.: It may very well be. We’re fortunate to be on a long-term time scale. It’s a unprecedented privilege, given by the [LVMH] group, to find a way to do things in the suitable way, in the suitable order and with the suitable timing.

“The Spirit of Chaumet”

Even though it covers some 240 years, this volume, being published on Nov. 23, isn’t a book on Chaumet history. In 12 chapters, echoing the home’s Place Vendôme address, jewelry expert and journalist Gabrielle de Montmorin said she explored the tenets of the home by “creating a continuing conversation” between the Chaumet archives and today’s production.

Along the best way she alights on seminal episodes equivalent to founder Marie-Etienne Nitot saving France’s crown jewels from destruction around 1793 by arguing they were the country’s patrimony; famous clients like empresses Joséphine and Eugénie; Joseph Chaumet’s installation of a photography lab to document and inform clients on stones as synthetic gems appeared within the late 19^th century, and more.

480 pages, 75 euros
Published by Thames and Hudson

“A Golden Age, 1965-1985”

Until Dec. 2 at 12 Place Vendôme in Paris, by reservation.

Put your tiaras away. This exhibition puts a highlight on a more audacious chapter of Chaumet history crammed with sizable and sculptural bronze designs, “wild gold” and “L’Arcade,” a 1970 concept so novel for the time that it had staff wearing the likes of Nina Ricci and doors left open to encourage visitors to step inside.

Contrasting with 12 Place Vendôme’s gilded salons are straw-toned yellow gold, colourful clashes of vivid hues, graphic torc necklaces, countless stunners imagined by jeweler Pierre Sterlé and the “Lien d’Or” set created in 1977 by then-artistic director René Morin and still a bestselling line.

“Boldness isn’t often related to Chaumet, a historical, statutory house with a picture connected to royalty and aristocratic families,” said director of patrimony Claire Gannet, explaining this evolution was to be read with its time, a moment that saw “liberalization of society, including women having their very own bank accounts and dealing, a recent fashion era.”

Meant as a four-week event, the exhibition curated by jewelry historian Vanessa Cron proved so popular that the jeweler prolonged it by an additional month, to Dec. 2.