In jewellery, everything is about light—the tradition of polished metal and stone has to do with how intensely it reflects and refracts, how brilliantly it dances and dazzles. For a pearl, it’s a similar but different story. Its light is softer, more dispersed. Instead of facets and sharp bursts of fire that catch the eye, light takes on a creamier, more sensual effect. Overtones and undertones of colour without the border of facets, the round gleam and lustre casting a more subtle and alluring spell. The multifariousness of light, indeed, is the theme of L’éclat, Mikimoto’s newest collection of high jewellery.
The revered Japanese jeweller unveiled the collection at the end of July in Beijing, the first Asian stop after it debuted in Paris during the couture season. Mikimoto chose to host its L’éclat exhibition in the Mandarin Oriental Qianmen, just minutes away from historical monuments like the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, to tap into both the cultural legacy of the East and a sense of contemporary luxury.
Vogue Singapore was in Beijing to view the 59-piece L’éclat collection, which explores and interprets the theme of light in various ways. Mikimoto is perhaps the most respected Japanese jeweller, and though it works with pearls, its jewellery design is far from staid or traditional. There is in fact a sense of daring and inventiveness to the designs, which echo the kind of enterprising innovation that founder Kokichi Mikimoto embodied as the inventor of cultured pearls.
Perhaps the most gasp-worthy creations in the collection are the head and body jewels that exemplify the brand’s one-of-a-kind craftsmanship and aesthetic sense. In L’éclat Stellaire, a lattice of finely strung white South Sea and Akoya cultured pearls is punctuated by star motifs set with diamonds. Unlike a tiara, the more traditional and expected style of head adornment, L’éclat Stellaire is soft and supple, draping to fit a wearer with elegant drama. Suzuki Yu, a senior designer at Mikimoto, explained that he drew inspiration from the geometry of ancient Middle Eastern arts, merging the emphasis of repetition with the cosmic light of stars to create its beauty.
A touch of the ancient world—specifically, Suzuki said, the solemnity and formality of temples and shrines—also inspired L’éclat Solaire, a necklace designed as a plastron-style jewel with radiating streams of cultured Akoya cultured pearls over the shoulders and décolletage. The neck is adorned with a sharp five-row strand of pearls styled like a stand collar, and the jewel imparts a sense of strength. Here, sunlight radiating in all directions was the inspiration. The white of the pearls evokes the combined colours of sunlight, with accents of emeralds, blue sapphires and diamonds akin to the scattered bursts of colour on the spectrum. At its centre, Mikimoto has set the jewel with an impressive 104.52-carat sea-green tourmaline.
“Pearls can match different materials like diamond, emerald and sapphire.”
This necklace, Suzuki shared, was the most challenging to craft. It took the Japanese brand’s master craftsmen almost a year to create, with almost four months of that time dedicated just to the exacting savoir-faire of stringing pearls. Like L’éclat Stellaire, such high jewellery pieces that dress larger swathes of the body require more sensitive calibration and finesse so that they wear both comfortably and elegantly.
The use of such impressive centre gemstones in Mikimoto high jewellery might surprise some, but Suzuki explained that pearls, in fact, pair easily and well. “The characteristic of pearls is acceptability,” he said. “Pearls can match different materials like diamond, emerald and sapphire. They always give us new inspiration and ideas, especially Akoya pearls, and black and golden South Sea pearls. Each one is a different colour and it’s fun to find new harmonies in all these.”
The brand’s preference, though, is for gemstones with a softer, more elegant colour over vivid intensity. The shoulder brooch L’éclat Majestueux, for instance, is centred by the limpid calm of an aquamarine, with its dangling streams of light dotted with Paraíba tourmalines and tanzanites.
For this house, though, the majesty of the pearl is where everything begins. An original light, if you will. That’s expressed in the aptly named L’éclat Originel necklace, in which a variety of diamond cuts and angular sculpted mother-of-pearl inlays depict a flash of brilliance. Suzuki described the design of this necklace as a Big Bang, invoking the formation of the universe—not unlike the effect that Mikimoto’s invention of the cultured pearl had on jewellery. At its centre, a large white South Sea cultured pearl shines like the representative heart of this house.
