Haute Joaillerie: Looking Like They Don't Care

PARIS - 'Movement.'

'I've always liked movement.'

'Fluidity.'

'Very fluid.'

If you had flung open the doors of the various carpeted salons, hotel suites and venerable cultural institutions showing 'high jewelry' during couture week (not easy to do, as most were heavily guarded), this is the kind of marketing argot that would've wafted out.

Both more expensive and less available than plain-old fine jewelry, the high category is a showcase for exceptionally rare and striking stones, like the pizza-slice-shaped opal used in a necklace at Louis Vuitton (also recalling the 'V' of the corporate monogram, noted the division's director, Hamdi Chatti), or somewhat easier-to-find ones in overwhelming quantity, like the almost 4,700 small diamonds in a butterfly brooch with dangling ballet slippers created by Cindy Chao with Sarah Jessica Parker ('mellifluous movement,' the press release burbled). Yet designers seem determined to make such gems seem as unstructured and informal on their wearer as plastic baubles from a mass-market accessories store.

Nonchalance about mind-bogglingly expensive things, after all, is perhaps the ultimate signifier of the upper class.

And so Wilfredo Rosado, in a darkened room at the Park Hyatt on Rue de la Paix, showed a collection inspired by the frenzied scribble of Cy Twombly's 'Bacchus' paintings, which he had seen at the Tate Modern, in London.

'That's what started this whole craziness,' Mr. Rosado said, ushering a visitor past vitrines containing a tumbling necklace and a bib featuring orange, pink and yellow diamonds scattered like so many Lucky Charms, as '70s soul music thrummed festively in the background.

A few blocks away on the Place Vendôme, itself shaped like an emerald-cut jewel, Olivier Reza, now directing the business founded by his father, Alexandre, paced around the gilded 18th-century chambers as he reflected on the aesthetic deficits of the modern age.

'I'm frustrated because today you can't find handmade cufflinks,' he said, twirling a pair with a floral motif. 'I think men have as much appetite for jewelry as women.'

Perhaps so, but as on the runway, this remains an industry overwhelmingly preoccupied with paying homage to the female form. (Emphasis on 'paying': These are pieces that easily run to millions of euros, not including the cost of bodyguards and insurance.)

Nearby, Chaumet, which has dubbed itself the Jeweler of Feelings, was a positive hive of feminine energy, with the artistic director Claire Dévé-Rakoff flitting about a rotunda surrounded by a retinue of translators and publicists. Her theme was water in all its forms, from a post-monsoon mist, to snow sprinkled on an iceberg to, Ms. Dévé-Rakoff declared dramatically while modeling a tasseled tanzanite necklace, 'the abyss, where there is no more light, all dark.' (In a week blindingly illuminated by flashbulbs, this sounded rather appealing.)

The Vendôme exhibitors handled their jewelry casually, urging grubby-fingered journalists to try it on; the atmosphere at Dior on the Avenue Montaigne, however, was more 'To Catch a Thief,' with an invisible force field surrounding the displays.

Bzzzz! Bzzzz! went a bug zapper-sounding alarm when this was violated.

Preparing as all these companies are for the Biennale des Antiquaires et de la Haute Joaillerie, the grand exposition scheduled for September, Victoire de Castellane of Dior mined the house's archives, with a bracelet meant to evoke the cinched waist of the classic Bar suit.

Down the street, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Chanel staged an elaborate presentation invoking the Café Society era, with Cubist versions of the house's signature camellia, and several pieces of jewelry strapped onto poles dangling from the ceiling, intended to conjure the dancers of the Ballets Russes. (There were Xs aplenty, but at this level, no sign of the famous interlocking Cs.)

Piaget, meanwhile, set up shop nearby at the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art & Culture, with cuffs integrating the brand's classic oval watch faces, but off-center. 'This way it creates movement,' said Jean-Bernard Forot, head of jewelry.

There were also new versions of timepieces concealed with little lids or in small globes, known as 'secret watches,' and popular in the 19th century, when members of the fairer sex were less preoccupied with their schedules. These could be updated even further, Mr. Forot acknowledged.

'Today women just take out their iPhones,' he said a little sadly. 'So I have to find something to hide the iPhone.'