Collectors beware: don’t fall in love with Fred’s latest high jewelry masterpiece necklace.
The titular star of the Monsieur Fred Golden Light collection being unveiled on Tuesday won’t be heading to a new home any time soon.
At least not while set with the 101.57-carat Soleil d’Or vivid intense yellow diamond, a gemstone first acquired in 1977, sold to a client unmounted and purchased a second time in 2021 for the house patrimony.
Planting a “not for sale” note on the most striking design in a collection might sound counterintuitive when high jewelry is at its fizziest during the traditional summer showcases of Place Vendôme.
But Vincent Reynes, chief executive of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned jewelry house, stands firm.
“It’s an excellent business decision, a fantastic one in fact because it’s about courage, something the world needs today,” he told WWD in a preview.
As much a treasure of nature as one for Fred, the stone “absolutely had to be kept in our archive,” he continued. “So it’s more a matter of brand, of heritage, of transmission from generation to generation than about business.”
At 90, “people always think of Fred as a new house, so in a way, it’s its eternal youth,” the executive added. “It’s more than an anniversary, it’s the end of a cycle and a new century that begins with a red thread formed of our values and the treasures that we have,” like the striking yellow diamond.
A Treasure Finally Set
The Soleil d’Or became the literal and symbolic sun around which orbits the third and final chapter of a trilogy of high jewelry collections dedicated to house founder Fred Samuel.
“I challenged myself to set it in a jewel for the first time in its 50-year history,” said vice president and artistic director Valérie Samuel. “The inspiration of this necklace was really the glow of the sun, radiating across the entire piece.”
Her design for the Golden Light necklace hinges on fil couteau lines of yellow gold that make diamonds — over 1,025 white diamonds for some 137 carats — seem to float over the skin.
Because the patrimonial gemstone is untouchable, the solution was to build into the design the possibility of exchanging with another stone — swiftly and without requiring a return to the workshop — while preserving the aura of the original.
The brooch that can be sold, inspired by the Soleil d’Or diamond.
Courtesy of Fred
Cue a radiant central motif, which can also be worn as a brooch, that detaches with a system neatly tucked in the back. For the future owner of the necklace, there will be a brooch with a central motif of a 11.25-carat yellow diamond with a halo of white and yellow diamonds to allude to the radiance of its larger sibling destined to head back to Fred’s vaults.
With the necklace as the pinnacle of the collection, Samuel tracked back to its starting point — looking at light throughout the day.
“For the end of the Monsieur Fred trilogy, a third chapter that coincides with the 90th anniversary of the house, I wanted to celebrate [his] love for the French Riviera and capture those furtive, magical moments,” said his granddaughter.
A Day on the Riviera, in Five Chapters
Each set therefore captures the light at that particular moment, starting with Moonlight Reflection’s evocation of the end of a night in Cannes, with a trio of velvety tanzanites totaling almost 65 carats, held by blued titanium claws, to figure the water in the bay, bubbling clusters of white diamonds representing lunar light reflected on its rippling surface.
Promising Dawn translates the elusive green flash meteorological optical phenomenon that can appear at sunrise and sunset, recreated in emeralds and opals set in a graphic radiant motif.
Crystalline Joy evoked a plunge in the waves of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, with gradients of teal tourmalines, mother-of-pearl and diamonds surrounding a 12.94-carat blue-green tourmaline on the necklace, part of a set that also includes an articulated bracelet and important cocktail ring.
The Moonlight Reflection high jewelry necklace.
Courtesy of Fred
Meanwhile, the figurative Blooming Senses set alludes to Fred Samuel’s honeymoon in an area filled with mimosa. A double-line multiwear necklace sees a freshly cut sprig resting on its side, fuzzy yellow flowers recreated as sculpted gold balls topped with yellow diamonds. Among them is an oval 11.65-carat yellow sapphire centerstone.
Beyond the poetic journey from first light to golden hour, the collection is about burnishing the Fred design language, Samuel said. “The archives serve to inspire us but are not to be reproduced one-to-one,” she said.
Golden Light is of course the apotheosis, that golden-hour moment.
Solar Energy to Power an ‘Experienced Start-up’
While it reentered high jewelry in 2022, the segment has “always been the preferred area of expression” for the French jeweler since its inception and is growing at a rapid clip in value and share of business.
But the pace matches the behind-the-scenes rebuilding of a value chain that starts with gem purchasing and creation but goes all the way to client experience, Reynes said. No shortcuts possible, and Fred favors collections that are “very compact but strong” over expansive ones.
Despite its higher ticket, high jewelry is paradoxically more resilient. Further down the price ladder, “you have to be particularly attentive because it is tomorrow’s clientele,” pointed out Reynes.
The Blooming Senses high jewelry necklace.
Courtesy of Fred
Designing around Soleil d’Or twice — one version for show only, the other salable — is the kind of bold move that feels necessary in today’s increasingly polarized high jewelry market, particularly in light of an ever-growing cohort of potential competitors in the pool where Fred sits. That’s where the halo effect of its apex creations comes in.
As luxury customers globally become more price-aware, it is becoming increasingly crucial to create a sense of coherence from the apex of the high jewelry pyramid, repeatable high-end lines such “1936” and a Soleil d’Or-inspired collection that are installed in key boutiques, and its fine jewelry offering.
Meanwhile, there’s opportunity aplenty for Fred in terms of geography.
Asia remains a stronghold — China, Korea, Japan and Thailand — but Reynes sees mid- to long-term potential in the Middle East and a strategic push in the U.S., where habits of wearing sizable jewelry daily dovetail with the maison’s solar, decomplexed positioning.
But all this is what Fred, “the modern jeweler designer” as the founder once coined, is built for. It is, after all, “a start-up with a little bit of experience,” quipped Reynes.
