Simply spellbinding — the secret of Boucheron's magic touch The Times Kim Parker Simply spellbinding — the secret of Boucheron's magic touch The historic maison's creative director, Claire Choisne, conjures exquisite jewels from unexpected materials, from real flowers preserved in bio-resin to a gel used by Nasa Boucheron Rain necklace in white gold, rock crystal and diamonds, from the Human Being high jewellery collection, POA Kim Parker Friday October 16 2026, 11.00pm BST , The Times Listen 0:00 / · 7:42 min Share Share this article Email Twitter Facebook Link Save Puzzles Challenge yourself with today's puzzles. H oodie toggles. Creepy crawlies. A piece of cloud in a pendant. These may seem like the ingredients of a fever dream, but in fact they are all precious high jewellery creations by Claire Choisne, the creative director at Boucheron. All recommendations within this article are informed by expert editorial opinion. If you click on a link in this story we will earn affiliate revenue This year marks the 15th anniversary of Choisne's arrival at the maison, founded in 1858 by Frédéric Boucheron, the scion of a family of cloth merchants who broke with tradition when he discovered jewellery-making. Like Boucheron himself, Choisne has forged an enviable reputation for curiosity and innovation, which she channels into covetable pieces that push the boundaries of classical design, combining diamonds and rare gemstones with unconventional materials such as marble, sand and raffia. Luxury newsletter The inside track on tech, travel, philanthropy and the hottest handbags, cars and spas. Sign up with one click You've successfully signed up to the Luxury newsletter Explore our newsletters An error occurred. Please use the link below. Luxury newsletter Explore our newsletters Yet, Choisne admits, jewellery wasn't a natural calling. “When I was in school, my main interest was economics. I loved the idea of having an artistic job without knowing what that was. I thought about being an architect,” she recalls. She credits her mother, a former notary, with nudging her in another direction. “She asked her clients what they did for a living and whether it might suit me. One day, she met a jeweller who was almost at the end of his career, but was still passionate about it. He gave her the details of a great school, which she passed on to me to research.” Tattoo necklace in white gold, smoky quartz and diamonds, POA, boucheron.com Advertisement Choisne subsequently applied to the Haute École de Joaillerie in Paris, widely considered the world's oldest jewellery school, and got in, eventually winning its prestigious Jacques Lenfant prize, awarded to the best students for precision, craftsmanship and design mastery. “I fell in love with the technical side of the job and felt like I could do things differently, in my own way. That was the beginning of everything,” she says. Claire Choisne In 1998, Choisne began her career as a designer at Creations Loiseau Kebadjian, a luxury accessories company, before joining the jeweller Lorenz Bäumer as his creative studio manager in 2001. A decade later, she moved to Boucheron and is now responsible for its biannual high jewellery creations, a capsule line of archive-inspired pieces called Histoire de Style, and a larger collection, Carte Blanche, released every summer, where she has total freedom to explore an encyclopaedic range of topics. Sable Noir necklace in white gold, black sand and diamonds, POA, boucheron.com Top stories 1 US inflation hotter than expected as Iran war stokes fuel costs Economics Top stories 1 Theo Paphitis: I bought a ￡100m business for ￡1 and two packs of Benson & Hedges Family Finances 2 Record fines for motorist victims of car cloning Family Finances 3 Premium Bonds are fun – until you realise what they are costing you Saving & Investing 4 Will Lyons: my vintage wine tour of South Australia Inspiration The 2018 Carte Blanche collection, Nature Triomphante, was a tribute to nature (a constant source of inspiration for Frédéric Boucheron): real flowers were preserved in bio-resin and adorned with gemstone pistils. The celestial-themed Contemplation collection from 2020 featured a rock crystal pendant filled with Aerogel, a low-density silica gel used by Nasa to capture stardust. Last year's Impermanence was a meditation on climate change and included botanical-inspired jewels coated in Vantablack, a pigment licensed by the artist Anish Kapoor. Absorbing over 99.9 per cent of light, it is one of the darkest materials on Earth. Pull Me hoodie toggles in white and yellow gold and titanium, POA, boucheron.com Advertisement “I don't choose to work with strange materials for the sake of it,” Choisne stresses. “It comes about because I have a dream for a collection and want to find the most accurate way to express it. So my team and I look everywhere, ask in every industry, to find the right things to make it happen. Sometimes it can get very complicated, but we never give up.” Case in point? Her use of Aerogel. “I wanted to recreate a drop of sky in a necklace, so I researched a random website and bought a tube of it to try. Initially it didn't work. But a few days later its creator, Ioannis Michaloudis, wrote to me on LinkedIn and offered to come to Paris and explain his gel to me. We ended up working together on that piece. So you never know how you will succeed.” Fleur Eternelles Hortensia Rosita ring in yellow gold, titanium, natural petal and yellow diamonds, POA, boucheron.com Most commented 1 Sonay Kartal defeats Elina Svitolina to reach Wuhan Open semi-finals Tennis 16 comments Because crafting high jewellery involves notoriously long production times, Choisne works on her ideas “a minimum of three or four years” ahead of launch. “The older I get, the longer it takes. I'm currently working on the next six collections for Boucheron,” she reveals. “I start by thinking about a broader concept. I ask myself, 'What is precious now?' And I spend a whole year reflecting on that idea. Then, when that's clear, I brainstorm with my team on how we will translate it. That's when the classical design work starts.” Her main source of inspiration is travel. “It could be to a city, a museum, or wherever, but I need to see new things, new people, and to not be in the Parisian bubble. I'm a visual thinker, so I take hundreds of photos on my phone when I travel, for reference later.” Japan, which inspired last year's high jewellery designs, exerts a powerful hold on Choisne's imagination, as does Iceland, which gave riseto 2024's Or Bleu collection, though the muse can strike at any time. “I get very tense muscles, so I like getting massages and actually I have a lot of ideas when I'm on the table,” she says, laughing. “I'm stuck there, unable to move, and when I close my eyes I see jewellery pieces in front of me. I like to joke that Boucheron should prescribe me massages all day long.” Gouette de Ciel necklace in white gold, rock crystal and diamonds, POA, boucheron.com Advertisement Choisne is keen to point out that her ideas aren't realised in isolation. “I've worked with an amazing philosopher for many years to formulate my ideas. And I've known many of the members of my team for a long time. We understand each other so well, we almost have our own language.” The importance Choisne places on collaboration is evident in Boucheron's latest high jewellery offering, Human Being, unveiled in July. Conceived four years ago, the line of five dramatic necklaces and matching rings is Choisne's response to the need for connection in an increasingly digitised world. “The noises about AI were starting to grow, and I felt really torn. I'm the kind of person who loves innovation, but at the same time it was a difficult concept to reconcile in my mind. I visited San Francisco to learn about AI, to understand it, and afterwards I really wanted to pay tribute to the other side of the coin, to humanity,” Choisne explains. Jack de Boucheron Ultime brooch in white gold, cofalit and diamond, POA, boucheron.com Each one-of-a-kind set was crafted with a specialist artisan, from the romantic floral motifs of the Flower suite, which were hand-drawn by a micropainter, Alexandra Carle, to the Victorian-inspired tattoo designs carved by Joseph Bongrand, a dedicated glyptician, on smoky quartz for the Tattoo set, which took over 1,100 hours to achieve. “I wanted to show the magic of people coming together,” Choisne says. “What they made looks so natural, you can't imagine how many hands are involved in bringing it to life.” In The Pocket in white gold and titanium, lacquer, onyx and diamonds, POA, boucheron.com This labour-intensive approach explains the collection's tightly edited size. “At the beginning of my career, I designed more pieces because I wanted to keep up with other houses that were producing huge collections, and still do. But, with time, I realised quantity isn't the point,” Choisne says. “The meaning of high jewellery is perfection. I would rather create one good thing that is expressed in the best way. It's more difficult to do, but at this point I'm not afraid of that any more.” Advertisement Her ideal challenge would be to design a singular, utterly flawless jewel. “That would be my dream. But it will have to wait,” she says with a smile. Indeed. The magician of Place Vendôme has six other high jewellery collections to complete first. boucheron.com Life & Style LUXX Jewellery Share Share this article Email Twitter Facebook Link Save