Mere months after announcing she’s expecting her first child with actor Ranveer Singh, Indian actress and advocate Deepika Padukone now takes a starring role as the face of Cartier’s new high jewellery collection, Nature Sauvage. The fauna-inspired range is expressed in the Cartier tradition of combining both the figurative and the abstract.

“Expressive jewellery showcases the attitudes and personality of an animal, its vitality,” says Jacqueline Karachi, Cartier’s director of high jewellery creation. “Like an actor, it plays with graphics, with volume and optical illusions, blending into an imaginary landscape. This is the spirit of Nature Sauvage.”

The first chapter of Nature Sauvage comprises 87 novelties, with the key pieces featuring design details drawn from forms and patterns found in the animal world, and reimagined through the maison’s masterful savoir faire in a playful, enigmatic fashion.

The collection opens with the Koaga necklace, which draws inspiration from the zebra, with brilliant- and emerald-cut white diamonds and onyx creating an alternating graphic pattern, and white gold openwork bringing lightness and shadow. The composition is completed with a 6.25ct pear-shaped rubellite. Next is the Panthère Jaillissante hand jewel, which transforms Cartier’s house emblem into a fully articulated and supple hybrid bracelet and ring. The feline is created from white gold and set diamonds, sapphire spots, emerald eyes and an onyx nose, with its paw stretched to guard an 8.63ct Zambian emerald.

Reptiles take their turn to shine through the Mochelys necklace and the Amphista necklace. Mochelys, in rose gold, camouflages a turtle snapping at a 71.9ct rubellite, while the shape of its flippers serve as the repeating motif that extends along the length of the necklace. (The turtle even detaches as a brooch.) The pixelated-looking Amphista depicts twin snakes in white gold, diamonds and emeralds, including nine octagonal ones from Colombia totalling 14.72ct.

The Celestun necklace is built around the pink flamingo, which is also found in the brooch created for the Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson in 1940. The bird is framed by a stylised backdrop of foliage, with emerald baguettes and a 38.5ct aquamarine bringing to mind tall reeds and deep ponds, respectively.

Other highlights include the Alae necklace, with a motif based on the outline of a beetle in flight as well as the silhouette of an Art Deco skyscraper; the Panthère des Glaces necklace, depicting a panther striding across a frozen landscape; the Tatsu necklace, an ouroboros featuring an East Asian dragon; and the Scutellia ring, with a crocodile’s rough scales made precious through diamonds and white gold.

This article was first seen on Grazia.sg

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