Gabrielle Chanel cultivated a private vocabulary of symbols. She surrounded herself with objects and emblems she regarded as auspicious, among them lions, sheaves of wheat, rock crystal and other personal talismans. She also attached meaning to imagery charged with sentiment: the comets she saw from the window during her time at Aubazine and later found worked into its cobblestones; the geometric purity of the camellia, which she admired and borrowed from the masculine wardrobe; and the energy of the sun, to which she responded instinctively.
With Signes & Symboles, Chanel returns to one of the deepest wells in its creative history: the constellation of symbols Gabrielle Chanel gathered around herself throughout her life. Presented at La Pausa, her villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, the 85-piece high jewellery collection reinterprets these emblems through vivid colours and exceptional gemstones. At its heart are four enduring icons: the comet, lion, camellia and sun. Each symbol is woven into creations that translate the founder’s private language into contemporary high jewellery.
The collection is organised into four lines, each offering a distinct interpretation of Chanel’s emblematic motifs. In Les Imprimés, the symbols are arranged in rhythmic, repeating compositions across plastron and bandeau necklaces, echoing a printed textile; no single emblem dominates, and the lion, camellia, comet and sun exist in quiet harmony, as these talismans did in Mademoiselle’s imagination.
Le Lion Emblématique gives the lion centre stage, her zodiac sign and the most recognisable of her personal symbols. Les Bijoux Talismans revolves around a newly introduced amulet, turning the collection’s symbols into intimate, protective keepsakes. In Les Symboles, each emblem is given a stage of its own. Paired with a striking centre stone, the motifs reveal their individual significance with greater clarity and presence.
“She constructed her own myth out of mysteries, signs, and symbols; she lived it and was imbued with it; symbols were everywhere, in her beliefs, her apartment, her jewellery and her lucky charms, her style.”
Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie, great-niece of Gabrielle Chanel, quoted in Chanel Intime by Isabelle Fiemeyer
The four lines share a core idea: Chanel’s classic symbols still hold growth potential. Signes & Symboles doesn’t seek new motifs but reimagines familiar symbols with fresher perspectives, employing bolder shapes, richer colours, and some of the most exceptional stones Chanel has gathered recently.
This evolution first becomes apparent in the jewellery’s design, where Signes & Symboles introduces two new shapes to Chanel’s high jewellery lexicon. The first is a square neckline inspired by ancient dress, featured throughout the collection’s plastron necklaces. Its sharply angular design required a high level of technical skill to create. Developed specifically for this collection, the neckline comprises two articulated lines that allow the pieces to sit comfortably on the body despite their architectural form.
The second is a newly introduced amulet motif that recurs throughout the collection. Sometimes worn alone, sometimes multiplied across a piece, it appears engraved with symbolic markings or rendered in openwork to reduce visual weight without sacrificing impact. Chanel has also reinterpreted the elongated, tablet-like form as a link shape, creating what it calls a cartouche chain. Together, the amulet and square neckline establish a distinct visual language for Signes & Symboles, giving familiar Chanel symbols a new framework in which to appear.
While form introduces a new visual language for the collection, colour brings an entirely different mood. Traditionally, Chanel high jewellery has leaned towards a stark black-and-white aesthetic, but Signes & Symboles features a much wider colour palette. The collection includes rubies, emeralds, sapphires, turquoise, chrysoprase, carnelian, imperial topaz, and yellow beryl—assembled over three years and comprising more than 10,000 stones, allowing the design studio to explore richer tonal variations and contrasts.
Some of the collection’s most striking moments emerge from these unexpected colour combinations. Turquoise, an atypical choice for Chanel, appears for the first time because of a chromatic saturation few stones can match. Only vein-free specimens were considered, a requirement that led to considerable material wastage and necessitated extensive negotiation with suppliers. The Symbole Emblématique ring demonstrates the result: a lion carved from turquoise, set against the deep orange glow of a round 12.47-ct spessartite garnet.
The collection’s ambition is equally apparent in the quality of the gemstones it assembles. Each of the four lines is anchored by a masterpiece centred on one of the traditional precious stones—ruby, sapphire, emerald or diamond. Among them is the Imprimé Lion necklace, the only piece in the collection to unite all four symbols in a single composition, built around a 20.66-ct unheated Sri Lankan sapphire. The Imprimé Émeraude ring, meanwhile, is set with a remarkable 10.44-ct Colombian emerald whose vivid colour becomes the focal point of the design.
Seen at La Pausa, the collection’s reliance on familiar symbols feels particularly apt. The lion, camellia, comet and sun were never arbitrary decorative devices; they were part of the personal mythology Gabrielle Chanel built around herself. Signes & Symboles does not attempt to replace that vocabulary. Instead, it expands it through form, colour, and stone selection, demonstrating that the strongest house codes are often those capable of revealing something new each time they are revisited.
