Mikimoto Teams Up With Luxury Brand Adeam for Paris High Jewelry Launch

PARIS – Blowsy roses, a chrysanthemum ruffled to reveal a thumb-sized pearl or a blooming sprig caught at its freshest are among the ephemeral wonders that Mikimoto sought to make permanent in its “Les Pétales” high jewelry collection.

“[It] captures the beauty of petals dancing in the wind, which mirrors what clients are increasingly drawn to — jewelry that feels alive, dimensional, and uniquely their own,” Yasuhiko Hashimoto, global executive vice president and chief operating officer of Mikimoto, told WWD in an email. “There is strong interest in pieces that express delicacy with technical mastery, designs that are sculptural, fluid and rich in detail.”

But the habits of high jewelry clients are evolving and Mikimoto is ready to follow.

While lustrous orbs and glittering gemstones take pride of place in the Japanese jeweler’s latest high jewelry collection, one more facet was polished ahead of its reveal Tuesday during Paris Couture Week.

“Having already decided that the mood of [the collection] should be classic and elegant, we went into development with the mindset of wanting our clients to feel like they could wear them more carefree and lightly, while each piece still retained a sense of grandeur and luxury,” Hashimoto said.

Inviting a designer to create bespoke pieces to highlight its high jewelry designs is a direction Mikimoto initiated last year, when it called on couturier Yuima Nakazato to complement its “The Bows” collection, an experience the executive described as “inspiring” and resulting in a “truly memorable collection.”

This year’s poetic-meets-precious inspiration yielded a plastron necklace where a rose unveils its 31-carat morganite heart and begins to scatter a fistful of diamond-set petals across a dozen rows of Akoya pearls ranging from 3.5 to 9 millimeters in diameter; a set with a collar and cuffs of pearls woven like lace, the white luster of its star material contrasted by the scattering of pink gold motifs set with just shy of 100 carats of white diamonds running across the surface, and a headpiece evoking a rose jauntily placed on the crown of the head, with a 13.10-carat tourmaline in an electrifying pink.

For Hashimoto, the one up to the challenge of giving these pearl-based designs the right spin was Adeam, the 12-year-old New York and Tokyo-based luxury ready-to-wear brand of designer Hanako Maeda.

“Having a boutique on Fifth Avenue in New York, we knew of Adeam as a fellow Japanese brand, and that they were a part of the New York Fashion Week scene,” Hashimoto said.

Add to that the realization that both brands share “common ground in terms of [their] desire to represent Japanese craftsmanship and artistry,” which made working together feel “correct,” he continued.

“Understanding the taste of our clients, in regard to both fashion and jewelry, definitely played into the details of how we design and sculpt our pieces,” Hashimoto said. “On top of that, through client engagement, we became more and more aware of the rising demands for personalized high jewelry and its wearability.”

Working with the likes of Maeda, or Nakazato before her, is part of a three-pronged approach of “exploring fresh silhouettes, new materials, and different techniques to reflect evolving customer lifestyle” while staying true to its heritage as a jeweler and “the originator of cultured pearls.”

For Maeda, the offer to work with the jeweler on silhouettes to accompany their latest high jewelry felt like “such a wonderful opportunity to really showcase Japanese craftsmanship and also what we can do as a much younger brand.”

As a longtime fan of the pearl specialist, she felt they have a deep heritage in Japan and had recently “homed into this idea of preserving heritage but also adding a touch of avant-garde, or something that’s a little bit more playful,” she told WWD.

Congruent with the collection’s inspiration of petals swept away in the wind, Maeda embraced a brief for outfits that were at once “elegant and classic but too traditional,” ranging from gowns to separates-driven silhouettes, all with a touch of convertibility.

Exhibit A: the blossom-pink gown in pleated organza, worn by Chinese actress, singer and model Dilraba Dilmurat in the leading image accompanying the unveiling of “Les Pétales.”  

“It’s interesting because the off-the-shoulder portion is actually a separate sleeve piece, which you can remove and wear [the dress] as a simpler bustier,” she explained.

And this, in turn, telegraphed the designer’s vision of Mikimoto and its pearls.

“I feel that [their] beauty really lies in the fact that it could really go from day to night,” Maeda said.