Haute couture and haute joaillerie should be natural bedfellows, yet it’s quite rare to see glittering high caliber jewels on the Paris Couture Week catwalks.

For her Fall 2017 Haute Couture collection, Chinese designer Guo Pei united her creative talents to those of Caroline Scheuefele, Chopard co-president and creative director, to present a couture collection that would perfectly match a high jewellery “wardrobe.”

While the idea for the collaboration came after one of Guo Pei’s customers asked Chopard to create a jewelry piece to complement a wedding dress created by the designer, it was the colorful statement-piece jewelry created by Chopard that set the tone for Guo Pei’s Fall collection.

Chopard’s Silk Road collection of High Jewelry was themed around a dreamy vision of the Orient with Guo Pei then continuing the creative journey and creating dresses that would best showcase the bejeweled creations.

Chopard's statement pieces included a stunning long South Seas pearl necklace with a delicately carved onyx, cornelian and jasper off-center piece depicting two tiny swallows (symbolizing good luck in Chinese culture) with diamond wings resting on pink sapphire flowers.

Another spectacular creation was an open necklace in blackened silver, white gold and rubies with two playful ruby pompoms. In line with the Silk Road theme, the Swiss jeweler used beautifully carved jadeite, rubies (a lucky color for the Chinese), and yellow

Guo Pei’s Fall/Winter 2017 collection was full of iridescent metallics that caught the light on the runway, echoing the glittering jewels, while the shapes evoked old glamour with classic ball gown silhouettes that hinted at their Oriental influences.

While there was still plenty of 3-D embroidery and beading for which the designer is now famous, these were generally toned down and only used as accents, on the back of a neck or peeking out from under a sleeve.

Particularly successful was a red and gold Chinese lantern shape emerging from the long sleeves of a gunmetal gown and a pale-gold mini-dress with an embroidered plastron at the front held by crisscrossing straps at the back and a puffy mini skirt hemmed with pink feathers.

Backstage before the presentation/Photo: @CoutureNotebook

This fall, the Chinese designer will have a fashion exhibition at the Savannah College of Art and Design, with Rizzoli releasing a companion book on her creations. She’s also planning to launch a luxury ready-to-wear collection, while continuing to design costumes for Chinese TV series and feature films.

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