s the success of the Piaget watches grew in the 50’s, clients started to ask for bespoke jewellery to go with these watches to create parures – earrings, rings and bangles. In 1959, Piaget opened its first Salon in Geneva, a unique store with a sign simply stating Piaget Horlogers Joailliers – Piaget, Watchmakers, Jewellers. Here, the Maison’s meticulously crafted watches and jewellery would be displayed side by side for the first time, heralding the successful transformation from watchmaker born in La Côte-Aux-Fées, specialising in ultra-thin components, to watchmaker and jeweller, right in the action.
A decade later, Piaget would show its extraordinary jewellery watches, famously known as the 21st Century Collection, expressly designed to echo, if not rival, the fashions of the time. Timepieces hand woven to be worn as Swinging Sautoirs with tigers eye or lapis-lazuli dials, cage-like gold cuffs embedding coral-dialled watch faces and studded with turquoise beads, and all comprising the bespoke slim movements.
Precious and yet wearable, these jewellery watches paved the way for the Maison’s first fine jewellery collection of ultra-wearable “bijoux” : the Possession Collection, unveiled in 1990. Showcasing the Maison’s mastery of gemsetting, goldsmithing, and technical prowess in one take, these early kinetic jewels, with spinning components, were noticeable from afar. The birth of an icon.
At its heart, this precious capsule takes its inspiration from the legacy of Piaget’s master chain makers, who ensured that not only their own expertise but that of the master goldsmiths who came before them would live on in the next generations. Like a bundle of precious braids, the Possession 150th Anniversary ring’s turning bands incorporate a clutch of beloved chain designs.
From the plump, white-gold gourmette chain to the braided palm chain and the twisted torsade, all three styles nestle harmoniously in a row, pave-set with diamonds and finished with highly polished gadroon edges. A ring to twist playfully on the finger, the diamonds catching the light as they spin.
As a nod to the Maison’s expertise in gemsetting and fearlessness with colour, the fourth ring displays a dazzling rainbow of sapphires, rubies and tsavorites.
A degrade of gemstones, carefully set, which spins alongside a band of white diamonds. Despite the fact that the Maison’s beginnings were confined to the green and white palette of the mountains of the Swiss Jura, Piaget was never afraid to go beyond that, conjuring up a world of extravagant colours and intense elegance, a combination that would become a unique hallmark: the Maison of Extraleganza.
Last, but not least, an engraved snake motif, usually found on the Limelight Gala watch complete the set of five jewels. With single spinning bands, each unexpected encounter of distinct texture and pattern is an ode to the Maison’s extraordinary history of engraving gold.
Definitively luxurious, modern and playful, the Possession collection celebrating Piaget’s 150th anniversary is an ode to joy, distilling decades of creativity into one precious capsule. Alongside other crucial celebratory launches – the revival of the Piaget Polo from 1979, a new ultra-thin prowess and the new Piaget Polo 150th anniversary Limited Edition, the Possession Capsule heralds a new milestone of Piaget’s rich history.
In honour of this, the inimitable Ella Richards fronts the new Possession campaign – the epitome of irreverent chic. The model and scion of rock and fashion royalty embodies all that Possession is – unmistakably playful and modern. Captured by esteemed visual artist Brigitte Niedermair, Ella Richards is the personification of where the revered Swiss Maison now sits – a storied heritage behind a decidedly modern face.
