Something About Rocks Spring 2025

Our Spring issue is centred around creators. The visionaries who established the jewellery business as we know it were creating some of their most iconic pieces in the late 19th century to 20th century. The designs of esteemed names such as Jeanne Toussaint at Cartier or Jean Schlumberger at Tiffany & Co. are still some of the best-selling creations of their respective houses. In her story for this issue, our Jewellery Director Vivienne Becker explores this thrilling period which produced some of the greatest designer-jewellers who ever lived. Elsewhere in the issue, our Deputy Editor Kim Parker meets the contemporary jewellers of the moment, including The Drays, Foundrae and Castro Smith as well as Cartier's visionary high jewellery designer Jacqueline Karachi. Our Spring cover features the dashing star of SAS…

1 HERMÈS In the hands of Hermès' creative director of jewellery, and one-time dancer, Pierre Hardy, jewels take on a fluidity and a life of their own. The sensuous curves and floral bud-like gemstones of the Météores ring, for example, have an organic, freshly-plucked appeal that seems to have sprung from the ground, not an atelier. 2 TASAKI X EYEVAN To mark its 70th anniversary this year, Tasaki has collaborated with other leading Japanese makers and adorned some of their most iconic creations with its signature Akoya pearls. For Eyevan, Japan's first fashion eyewear company established in the 1970s, eight sunglasses styles have all been embellished with Tasaki's 'Balance' and 'Danger' pearl motifs, transforming their pragmatic designs into something far more precious. 3 GIRARD-PERREGAUX With its space age vibes, Girard-Perregaux's unusual Casquette wristwatch…

After a memorable turn in BBC's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Asha Banks stands on the edge of stardom with her new and highly-anticipated first film lead role in My Fault: London. Adapting the material of the 2023 Spanish film My Fault, which was based on the first book in Argentinian author Mercedes Ron's bestselling Culpables trilogy - Culpa mía - My Fault: London is directed by Dani Girdwood and Charlotte Fassler for their directorial debut. Banks, a rising British actor and singer-songwriter, who is full of infectious cheer and laughter as she models head-to-toe Louis Vuitton on set with Something About Rocks, plays the role of lead teenage character Noah, who crosses paths with bad-boy Nick (played by Matthew Broome), after their parents get married and they all…

At the start of the 20th century, the idea of the individual artist-jeweller or designer-jeweller was very new. Fuelled by an emerging cult of personality, the named and celebrated designer-jeweller was a 20th century phenomenon that gave birth to a roll call of talented, singular creators, each with a strong point of view and a vision that transformed the jewel into the most powerful expression of personal style. It began with Carlo Giuliano (1831-1895), the Italian-born, London-based, self-styled 'art jeweller' whose refined jewels in the revival style appealed to an aesthetically inclined clientele. Then, at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900, the dramatic, cinematic and dangerously decadent art jewels dreamt up by the great poet-goldsmith, René Lalique (1860-1945) took the world by storm. They marked the high point of the…

You don't need to think too hard to recall the most important news in sports sponsorship of 2024: the official announcement that luxury goods giant LVMH was to become the new 'global partner' of Formula 1. As of now, the deal places the group's multiple brands front and centre before F1's estimated global fan base of 750 million people, providing a turbo boost for everything from Louis Vuitton's clothing division to its Moët Hennessy drinks arm - which includes no fewer than three podium-worthy champagne houses. But the biggest Grand Prix job of all goes to TAG Heuer, LVMH's most motor sport-orientated watch brand which wrests the coveted mantle of 'official F1 timekeeper' from Rolex after an 11-season run few thought would end so abruptly. While Rolex was a more…

Unveiled in Vienna last summer, the latest chapter of Cartier's high jewellery collection, Nature Sauvage, offered a fresh take on the maison's celebrated menagerie. Its iconic panther, which first appeared in the Cartier repertoire in 1914 as a pattern of onyx and diamond spots on a graphic wristwatch, was reworked as a playful hand jewel - the lithe sapphire and diamond beast ferociously stalking a Zambian emerald of over eight carats. An elegant flamingo, initially made famous as a colourful brooch crafted for the Duchess of Windsor in 1940, appeared this time with diamond plumage, amidst a reed bed of baguette-cut emeralds. As ever, these were pieces that blurred the boundaries between the figurative and the abstract. For one necklace, called 'Koaga', the proud head and neck of a zebra…