The sea is this year’s leading inspiration for jewellers
The endless seas are the great creative frontier in jewellery today,
inspiring numerous high jewellery collections unveiled and presented this year
Something’s in the air lately in jewellery design—or in the water, rather. For millennia, we’ve looked above and below to wonder about our place in the world. Yet for all the discoveries, very little continues to elude, fascinate and inspire like the ocean. The vast seas—they cover significantly more area on our planet than land, mind you—have shaped and defined cultures, trade and history. The siren song of the seas is as hypnotic as it is varied, as we are seeing being played out in several recent collections of jewellery inspired by the sea.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure novel Treasure Island was the inspiration and namesake behind Van Cleef & Arpels’s newest range of high jewellery. It’s perhaps the maison’s most playful collection in years, with nods to a pirate adventure and a search for hidden treasure. It gleefully takes on board these childlike symbols and motifs, and turns it on its head with the maison’s signature grace and elegance.
By Gordon Ng
28 May 2025
Singapore Vogue
Consider the Coquillage Mystérieux seashell clip, which is arranged with mystery-set buffed top square rubies, round and baguette-cut white diamonds, and pink diamonds. On the reverse, a charming secret that toys with the house’s classical ballerina and fairy motifs: a nereid, perched atop a cultured pearl, hoisting an emerald.
The ocean can certainly play to the emotions of jewellers and designers. Take the designs of China-born, Spain-based jewellery artist Wallis Hong, whose pieces are sculptural, dreamlike and have an aquatic quality even when they aren’t inspired by the sea. He describes his first design, the Eternal Butterfly, as a “waterdrop butterfly” that has burst out of a cave with droplets cascading off its form. When I question him about this consistency in design—which is most pronounced in the way he sculpts blue titanium into organic shapes—he explains that the idea is more universal, to evoke emotions and spark imaginations, not taxonomic literalism. “Some viewers might feel the inspiration comes from water,” he says, while “others may sense influences from the sky or the universe”.
Hong tells me that recent designs, such as the Thorn Shells earrings, were inspired by his first trips to the Spanish islands of Ibiza and Formentera. “There, I discovered the natural forms of conches on the beaches and explored the vibrant underwater ecosystems teeming with diverse marine life.”
…and so much more!
Tap here to catch all the sea-worthy designs in Singapore Vogue!
