Marie Antoinette’s magpie eye for the lavish and precious — and the latest trends — knew no bounds.
Had she not bought a handsome bracelet set with antique cameos at the gates of Versailles from a then-unknown teenaged goldsmith named Jean-Baptiste Mellerio?
Almost 250 years later, it was inside the boundaries of the palace’s estate that the jeweler’s descendants unveiled the “Jardin des Rêves” high jewelry set, composed of a necklace with a detachable pendant and a single earring.
They come in a bespoke trunk modeled after the “marmotte,” a trunk with straps in which the dynasty’s founder brought his creations to Versailles, which was technically the “first Mellerio boutique” according to brand lore.
Taking pride of place on these gem-set multicolored creations — and the Pierre Frey fabric lining the trunk — is a voluptuous pineapple motif.
A stylized version of the fruit, featured prominently on a color-filled tapestry in Marie Antoinette’s private apartments, caught the eye of Laure-Isabelle Mellerio, artistic director of the 412-year-old French family-owned jeweler and a member of its 14th generation.
The Jardin des Rêves high jewelry set.
Courtesy of Courtesy of Mellerio
Not only did this resonate with the house’s penchant for gardens, naturalistic treatments and color, but the tapestry itself gave a glimpse of the doomed queen’s “intimate taste,” Mellerio said.
“At the time it was the king of fruits, a recent import, and this exoticism allied to the richness of color [showed] how advanced the queen’s taste was,” she continued. “There is this layering of an original motif with the printed cotton tapestry, another novelty at the time.”
Plus, Mellerio herself found the fruit attractive from a jeweler’s standpoint. In particular, its volume makes it “immediately impactful because everything that’s round like that becomes very pretty as a pendant because it moves and catches the light,” she said.
Two years were necessary to source the stones used to evoke the chromatic richness of the Toile de Jouy print that called for some 27 colors — the maximum number possible, a docent noted during the evening.
The necklace, a multicolored take on the house’s “Pierreries” design, features more than 170 carats worth of juicy-hued gemstones that include aquamarines, heliodores, tanzanites, emerald-green tourmalines, rubellites, morganites, rosy imperial topazes and sapphires in blues or pinks.
Hanging from a 1.12-carat ovoid Mellerio-cut diamond is the pineapple.
Executed in a gem-set lattice filigree evoking the pattern of the rind and set with more than 8 carats of precious stones including diamonds, with leaves paved with some 300 smaller gems, it can be detached and worn with the solo earring as a matching set — but the artistic director suggested a stud earring for an of-the-now asymmetric vibe.
For managing director Christophe Mélard, the set is something of a crowning achievement that indicates the direction the house has taken over the past two years, marked by the introduction of the monochromatic Pierreries necklaces and continued with XXL-sized Talisman high jewelry pendants meant to be worn in a more quotidian manner.
“When we presented our jumbo Talisman necklaces, we evoked the idea of unfussy high jewelry,” he said. “Here, it’s the same idea with the necklace. It has an almost-costume side and this idea of having something that feels a little off the beaten track of so-called classic high jewelry appealed to us.”
The set’s price tag of 900,000 euros — or 750,000 euros, French taxes excluded — might also catch the eye. “We considered it was [judicious] to make it extremely attractive by the quality of the product, its desirability and the history behind it, but also by a price some may consider unreasonable but we consider very reasonable [all factored in],” said the executive.
While he said the Jardin des Rêves set would likely not land Stateside, where the jeweler has been exclusively stocked at Bergdorf Goodman since February 2024, a second pair of earrings with its pineapples will be presented at the New York department store.
It’s a development that reads as a nod to a market that’s proven fertile ground for the French jewelry house, with a strong debut that saw the U.S. grow to a 25 percent share of business in 2024.
The first half of 2025 has been more subdued, with sales contracting year-over-year. The jeweler also effected a 20 percent price increase, due to the combination of the new U.S. tariffs and significant cost increases on raw materials, including gold.
Mélard was nonetheless cautiously confident, thanks to U.S. consumers’ appetite for exceptional pieces that could lead to a swift turnaround.
That’s also why designs such as the pineapple-filled Jardin des Rêves set are key.
“In the past, we leaned a great deal on being the jeweler of queens,” Mélard said. “But we are also in the mindset of finding contemporary queens, [who] walk on the streets, go to dinner, work and have at some point in their life the opportunity to wear sets that are a little more exceptional.
“This set is also here to support Mellerio’s contemporary aspiration of being joyful, playful in its way of offering a high jewelry gesture to its future client,” he continued.
