Inside Piaget’s world, excess is never accidental. It is studied, sculpted and, above all, emotional. Sitting down with Christophe Bourrie, the Maison’s global director of high jewellery, it becomes quickly apparent that the Swiss jeweller’s newest high jewellery chapter – Essence of Extraleganza – is less about ostentation and more about obsession: with stones, with engineering, and with the ineffable moment when a woman recognises a piece as her own.
“It’s all about emotion,” Bourrie says. “When you know, you know. It’s like falling in love.”
That sensibility runs through the collection, translating Piaget’s heritage into bold geometry, 1960s swagger and hyper-precise craftsmanship. Extravagance and elegance – “extra” and “leganza,” as Bourrie phrases it – are not opposing forces here, but co-conspirators.
“We want to be daring,” he explains. “But still beautiful. Bold – and refined. That is Piaget.”
Unlike fashion, where silhouettes are sketched first and fabrics follow, high jewellery can begin at the other end of the dream: with a stone so rare it refuses to be ignored. Bourrie recounts a recent acquisition with the enthusiasm of someone describing a cinematic meet-cute.
“When you come across a stone like that, you cannot let it go,” he says. “It’s like the love of your life. A ruby, more than eight carats – completely natural. Mines finished. Impossible to find again. So you take it. And then the obsession begins.”
From there, sketches appear almost immediately – feverish, instinctive – before the sobering realities of engineering and economics arrive. “We are talking about six-million-euro necklaces,” he laughs. “After, you think: okay… how do we price the dream?”
Yet practicality is never allowed to dull fantasy. If anything, Piaget’s technical prowess heightens it – particularly through transformability, a signature that allows monumental pieces to slip into daily life.
“These women are younger now,” Bourrie says. “Thirty and above. They don’t want to wear something once every six months. They want to wear it with jeans. On the street.”
Designing mechanisms that are invisible, secure, comfortable and effortless is, he admits, “almost crazy.”
“You want it safe – but not bulky. Beautiful – but practical. Easy – otherwise the client never transforms it. All these things do not go together. That is the challenge.”
Behind the scenes, creativity is filtered through a multi-disciplinary committee: designers, craftspeople, sales teams and historians weighing each proposal against Piaget’s DNA.
“We fight a lot,” Bourrie smiles. “Sometimes something is gorgeous, but you say – maybe it’s not Piaget. We ask: does it match why clients come to us? Does it speak to the next 150 years?”
That reverence for continuity is what allows the Maison to flirt so confidently with archival motifs – trapezoids, sweeping cuffs, hypnotic colour – without drifting into nostalgia. During Piaget’s 150th anniversary, Bourrie recalls placing heritage jewels beside new creations and watching clients struggle to tell them apart.
“The best compliment was when they asked: which one is new?” he says. “Then you know you’ve done it right.”
For Bourrie, the final judge is always the wearer – increasingly women buying for themselves.
“Almost fifty percent,” he notes proudly. “Independent women. They know what they want. A six-million-euro necklace? If it’s right, she buys it for herself.”
He recounts moments that still give him goosebumps: a woman stopping mid-salon, locking eyes with a piece, purchasing it within minutes.
“When it’s for you, it’s for you,” he says softly. “That’s high jewellery. It finds you.”
It’s a sentiment that feels perfectly aligned with the tone of Essence of Extraleganza: jewels not as trophies, but as talismans – vessels of memory, desire and self-expression.
“We are lucky,” Bourrie adds, almost to himself. “We write love stories every day.”
