It is with great sadness that Chanel announces the death of Patrice Leguéreau, Director of the Jewelry Creation Studio, at the age of 53.
A graduate of the École Boulle and the Institut National de Gemmologie, Patrice Leguéreau spent 6 years at Cartier and 11 years at Van Cleef & Arpels, before taking over as head of Chanel’s Jewelry Creation Studio in February 2009. He went on to design all the Jewelry and Haute Joaillerie collections (26 in total), Precious Objects such as William Christie’s academician’s sword, as well as all special commissions.
The way he revisited Chanel icons such as the Comète, Plume, Camélia, Blé, Matelassé and Perles by traveling through the intimate world of Gabrielle Chanel allowed him to impart a unique touch that gave new impetus to high jewelry. Patrice Leguéreau also made Leo, Mademoiselle Chanel’s astrological sign, an integral part of Chanel’s high jewelry style.
With the Tweed de Chanel and N°5 collections, the designer and his team opened new chapters in the history of high jewelry, permanently adding a fabric and a fragrance to the Maison’s precious heritage. The Tweed collection has made a lasting impression on the industry and the public alike, thanks to its extraordinary craftsmanship. It uses rigid materials such as gold, platinum, gemstones and pearls to reproduce the irregular weave of soft, dense and supple tweed, thanks to remarkable interweaving and articulation. The Tweed necklace will remain part of the Maison’s heritage, a testament to the exceptional work that took 2,400 hours to complete.
In 2021, to mark the 100th anniversary of the creation of fragrance N°5, an entire collection of high jewelry diamonds was brought into the precious realm of this symbolic number, usually reserved for couture costume jewelry. A unique necklace in the shape of a bottle of N°5, the lower part of which metamorphoses into drops of perfume, was set with 700 diamonds, including an emerald-cut diamond weighing exactly 55.55 carats D FL (Type IIa). This jewel of perfect natural purity is now part of Chanel’s heritage.
Patrice Leguéreau knew how to breathe modernity into Chanel while respecting the spirit of Gabrielle Chanel and the Maison’s jewelry culture. In 2022, the 90th anniversary of the 1932 Bijoux de Diamants collection, designed by Coco Chanel herself (the only one she made during her lifetime), gave rise to a reinterpretation of three celestial themes: the comet, the moon and the sun. It’s a wonderful tribute to the fashion designer who briefly became a jeweler in order to give new meaning to value following the devastating 1929 financial crisis. As she once said, “I chose diamonds because their dense nature represents the greatest value in the smallest volume.”
The teams at Chanel Joaillerie feel orphaned by their loss of, in their words, a “deeply sensitive, humble and approachable man with a great sense of community”. An illness which had forced him to take a back seat for several months finally took its toll. The presentation of Chanel’s next high jewelry collection, which he had designed with his team, will have an emotional flavor.
