Ever since Jean-Marc Mansvelt took the helm of Chaumet in 2015, he’s been on a mission to wake the historic French jewelry house from slumber.

The house has certainly been stretching its legs. Industry sources estimate Chaumet has reached around 450 million euros in reveues, exceeding pre-pandemic levels, although its parent group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton does not break out the company’s results.

Right now its famous tiaras are selling like gem-encrusted hot cakes, starting at just shy of 50,000 euros for ornaments that hew toward headbands, heading to 150,000 euros to have laurels unfurling across one’s brow and from there to the “sky’s the limit” budget of bespoke designs.

And 2024 might see this not-so-Sleeping Beauty hit the ground running. Between iconic designs and the visibility of creating the medals for the upcoming Paris Summer Olympics, Mario Ortelli, managing partner of the luxury advisory firm Ortelli&Co., was positive about the brand and said it “can have ambitions to develop significantly.”

While the house “doesn’t have the ambition to be everywhere,” Mansvelt feels the time is ripe for “the only pure player in the market” — it only has jewels and a handful of jewelry timepieces — to step out with gusto.

Here, the executives talks with WWD about why not being worn by everyone is the house’s “key to enter anywhere,” what door it plans to open next and hints that a tiara could be best paired with a power suit.

WWD: How many tiaras are sold these days?

Jean-Marc Mansvelt: We’re around 100 pieces per year. What’s even more interesting recently is that we really have effervescence around special orders and not just from royal families. We are often at the heart of a personal and familial history.

When I first arrived [in 2015], I could see their symbolic value but wondered why someone would wear one [now], what made a tiara contemporary. Seeing people opt for them today is great.

WWD: How is a tiara different to other types of high jewelry pieces?

J.-M.M.: As a rule of thumb, there’s a symbolic aspect of power or of love, of attachment. Tiaras are objects of meaning, not a fashion. 

One client wanted to celebrate the fact that her son and daughter-in-law had finally had a son after three daughters. The design, which took almost two years to develop and includes the family crest, is an exceptional piece that required almost 2,000 hours of work and includes some 1,800 diamonds. But above all, it’s a symbol of that family being built.

There’s something transformative in a tiara, too. While just as beautiful as other jewels, it carries something more. Through millennia of history, crown-like objects have signified this connection between the earth and the sky. Someone wearing a tiara changes posture, it’s rather spectacular.

WWD: Who orders a tiara in 2023?

J.-M.M.: Several types of occasions call for tiaras. The most classic is parents purchasing or ordering for a daughter’s wedding and we see there the symbolic and historical dimension, connected to the relationship between Napoléon [Bonaparte] and Joséphine [de Beauharnais], history with a capital H, transmission and investment. We see those kinds of orders [coming] a lot from Asia, also in the Middle East.

Then you have powerful women, for whom the diadem becomes the materialization of power. Shortly after my arrival, we delivered a bespoke design with spinels to a Hong Kong-based businesswoman — who has since ordered several more — where there was this real idea of a crown of saying, “I go to my board meetings bearing a visual reminder of the power I wield.”

WWD: Are they an entry point for new high jewelry clients?

J.-M.M.: A good proportion of those purchases are by women for themselves, among clients from Asia and the Middle East. One example that comes to mind is a 25-year-old Chinese customer who ordered a diadem to mark the end of her university education.

Special orders for those aren’t the first purchase of a client, they usually [represent] the deepening of an already established relationship — and we have a number of clients who have done several.

But clients have bought a design we presented [as part of a collection], like this important high jewelry client who spotted a spectacular diadem from our exhibition in the Forbidden City in 2017, set with yellow and white diamonds, at 12 Place Vendôme and bought it on the spot for an event she had that week.

WWD: Is this popularity a recent development or has it always been there?

J.-M.M.: There was [constant] demand and we had started to [offer] more but that increase can also be attributed to their presence in the boutique concepts that was rolled out starting in 2017. As an incarnation of the house, I absolutely wanted the diadem to be physically present [in store], so people could see the objects with their true volume and be able to try them on.

It’s always been an important part of the business for Chaumet but 2021, 2022 and 2023 have truly been record years, where we have seen from 50 to 100 percent growth in the number of tiaras sold.

WWD: Has the interest in that category brought growth in others?

J.-M.M.: It’s difficult to quantify but tiaras ennoble the house immensely and are a concrete summary of [its history]. Unquestionably it helps for, say, the Joséphine collection, transposing that design to the finger as a ring. Having [that design] on your finger to celebrate your love makes for an original choice but also anchors to the big story, creating very strong symbolism.

WWD: Why put on near simultaneously the boldness of “A Golden Age, 1965-1985” in Paris and “Tiara Dream,” an exhibition held in September in Shanghai with a more historical starting point?

J.-M.M.: What I always like to showcase is that a jewelry house, and Chaumet in particular, is never a creation in a void. What’s important for us is to express that we aren’t just a house of France’s First Empire period [under Napoléon Bonaparte] — we’d have long disappeared if we had fossilized.

At every period, there is a connection to the world around us and that’s also true of tiaras. At the turn of the 20th century, it was rather crown-like but it became aigrette-like as silhouettes become more streamlined and so on.

The ‘60s and ‘70s period [covered by “A Golden Age”] is interesting because it shows that this house that’s supposedly very traditional kept doing what it did best but also created a novel retail concept to try things out and address a social revolution. But pieces like those of [jeweler Pierre] Sterlé — with this golden hair that moves] may not have come to life without two centuries of know-how and jeweler history.

WWD: Does heritage help in today’s volatile context?

J.-M.M.: For us, things are going rather well. We are in a market dynamic where Chaumet isn’t so much a grand old lady as an awoken sleeping beauty who remains very new for a vast majority. That’s an opportunity.

The jewelry market has significantly developed and we have a growing place, thanks to representing an alternative for clients who want something different that others aren’t wearing yet.

Contexts are uncertain and volatile, for sure, but we are on “jewelry time.” While every day is different, we have markets that are overperforming on an extraordinary scale, like Japan and the Middle East, with high double-digit growth rates.

WWD: To what do you attribute this success?

J.-M.M.: Re-centering on local markets and clients, which we effected during the pandemic, has been an important shock absorber. That enabled us to build a much more solid, much more important local business. In both regions, it’s local customers that are driving business.

That said, we are keenly aware that the environment isn’t 100 percent favorable so we have shelved or postponed projects. No one knows what will happen in three or six months.

More than ever, we have to be flexible and keep our ear to the ground while not getting swept away [by the conjuncture]. We still talk of beauty, creation, know-how, eternity — rather interesting things.

WWD: What is the most important market for Chaumet?

J.-M.M.: China remains a major market for us, but it’s now become a local market. Here, too, consumers are more local than touristic, which wasn’t the case pre-2019. That’s the greatest change.

That said, our network in China isn’t as developed as some of our major competitors so there’s also a notion of selectivity that gives us opportunities that we’ll seize — or not — in coming years.

WWD: Beyond the macroeconomic and geopolitical context, what about challenges in the jewelry supply chain?

J.-M.M.: To be clear, sourcing certain types of stones, including hard stones, can be an issue. It’s not just availability but also, at what price can we get them? Prices have gone up tremendously. Clients’ knowledge levels have evolved and they have a very good idea [of what materials are worth on average], particularly in high jewelry.

What we have done is continue to explore a path of objects that aren’t just about the stones but also call on kaleidoscopes or shades of colors, pushing our creative range as wide as possible. That’s an asset.

That’s also something that “The Golden Age” aims to demonstrate: Chaumet has always known how to take those side steps without falling into extravagance or provocation.

WWD: What other markets are you looking at?

J.-M.M.: Today, our sights are set on South Asia, where we aren’t and is a huge market. We’ve had a retail presence in Singapore for a while and entered Australia in 2018, where we have been doing very well and recently opened our first stand-alone store on Sydney’s Pitt Street.

But within the next six to eight months, we are going to open Malaysia, by the end of the year; then Vietnam, followed next year by [an opening in] Bangkok, Thailand, and Indonesia.

WWD: What about the U.S.?

J.-M.M.: It remains an extremely complex market and one that requires more muscle than we have today. It isn’t an easy gold mine, a costly market that requires a long time to mature.

Looking at the brands that are successful there, international or American, they’re very different from the Chaumet style.

That’s not to say American clients aren’t interested in Chaumet. Proof is that they’re the largest contingent at 12 Vendôme in recent months. And when you look at the books, we aren’t missing any of the prominent American [families] since the end of the 19th century. Some U.S.-based collectors have even loaned pieces for the exhibition.

At the same time, we aren’t completely absent since we have a lot of requests from American clients through e-commerce or calls to our Paris boutiques and we have had some very good orders.

The answer might be starting to put down pieces of Chaumet narration [in the U.S.] and seeing how the market responds to get the key to the next step.

WWD: So it’s about installing the culture of Chaumet before adding product?

J.-M.M.: It could be. We are fortunate to be on a long-term time scale. It’s an extraordinary privilege, given by the [LVMH] group, to be able to do things in the right way, in the right order and with the right timing.

“The Spirit of Chaumet”

Although it covers some 240 years, this volume, being published on Nov. 23, isn’t a book on Chaumet history. In 12 chapters, echoing the house’s Place Vendôme address, jewelry expert and journalist Gabrielle de Montmorin said she explored the tenets of the house by “creating a constant conversation” between the Chaumet archives and today’s production.

Along the way she alights on seminal episodes such as founder Marie-Etienne Nitot saving France’s crown jewels from destruction around 1793 by arguing they were the country’s patrimony; famous clients like empresses Joséphine and Eugénie; Joseph Chaumet’s installation of a photography lab to document and inform clients on stones as synthetic gems appeared in the late 19^th century, and more.

480 pages, 75 euros
Published by Thames and Hudson

“A Golden Age, 1965-1985”

Until Dec. 2 at 12 Place Vendôme in Paris, by reservation.

Put your tiaras away. This exhibition puts a spotlight on a more audacious chapter of Chaumet history filled with sizable and sculptural bronze designs, “wild gold” and “L’Arcade,” a 1970 concept so novel for the time that it had staff wearing the likes of Nina Ricci and doors left open to encourage visitors to step inside.

Contrasting with 12 Place Vendôme’s gilded salons are straw-toned yellow gold, colorful clashes of vivid hues, graphic torc necklaces, endless stunners imagined by jeweler Pierre Sterlé and the “Lien d’Or” set created in 1977 by then-artistic director René Morin and still a bestselling line.

“Boldness isn’t usually associated with Chaumet, a historical, statutory house with an image connected to royalty and aristocratic families,” said director of patrimony Claire Gannet, explaining this evolution was to be read with its time, a moment that saw “liberalization of society, including women having their own bank accounts and working, a new fashion era.”

Meant as a four-week event, the exhibition curated by jewelry historian Vanessa Cron proved so popular that the jeweler prolonged it by an extra month, to Dec. 2.