During his teenage years, visits to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels and the Apollo Gallery in Le Louvre to see the Crown of France sparked a life-long fascination with the stories of famous stones. Now, Jean-Bernard Forot, Jewelry Marketing Director at Piaget, creates stories of his own each year to present the haute joaillerie collections of the maison.

Entitled “Secrets & Lights – A Mythical Journey by Piaget,” the new Piaget Haute Joaillerie and Haute Horlogerie collection celebrates the Silk Road and its stories of mysterious travels, focusing on two legendary cities, Venice and Samarkand in Uzbekistan, a desert city famed for its Islamic architecture with its blue domes and colorful mosaics.

Venice is particularly close to the heart of the French jewelry brand ever since it supported the restoration of its Clock Tower, Forot explains. But for this collection rather that look at Venice's green lagoon as it had previously, Piaget has found inspiration in its architecture and  its famed masked balls. This translated into the use of feathers using a marquetry technique, which has been used previously on watches, but never in high jewelries due to their fragility.

To find out more about the Piaget’s style and the Piaget woman, as well as the inspiration behind this new collection and its innovative use of metiers d’art, watch the video.