In Chaumet’s workshop, a space with natural light and views of Trajan’s column in the Place Vendôme, work is underway these days on a strange commission. His craftsmen are busy creating a tiara for the new power. In this house, which has signed pieces for Josefina Bonaparte, Eugenia de Montijo and Olga Picasso, they work at full speed to finish the diadem of a powerful businesswoman on time. She is powerful, young and of Chinese nationality. That’s all we’ve managed to find out. The jewel must be ready for the last board meeting of the year. The businesswoman wants to appear with the divine halo conferred by a gold and diamond tiara. A crowned head receives power from God, from heaven, or whoever is pulling the strings up there. That’s what tradition dictates. Dressed in a jewel worth three million euros, she hopes to make it clear who is in charge in that boardroom.
What kind of people would order a tiara in 2023? This is a difficult question for the directors of Chaumet, a jewelry company founded in 1780, owned by LVMH since 1999. Queens and princesses, brides, grateful mothers-in-law and apparently businesswomen. After an exhaustive review, Thibault Billoir, curator of the house’s archives, finds the records of those commissioned in the 19th century and part of the 20th century, the emblematic Chaumet tiara of Queen Victoria Eugenie with fleurs-de-lis or the diadem of ears of wheat from Josefina Bonaparte, including the wedding rings of Eugenia de Montijo and those of Olga and Pablo Picasso, but the house protects its clients’ data for at least 75 years. You only know about the living what they want to tell. Jean-Marc Mansvelt, CEO of Chaumet, a president who goes to work by subway and has no car or driver, shrugs his shoulders with an enigmatic smile: “We have never had so many orders for tiaras as now.”
![Benoît Verhulle, head of workshop number 13 at Chaumet, poses in the facilities where the jewelers work, overlooking the Place Vendôme in Paris.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/t5FiyyLdQyinQxXEDdzCz2iO7pw=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/UYE7NNQKKNHRDLBX7QSELHYYQY.jpg)
The Chaumet house became famous in the first empire (1804-1815). Claire Gannet, the brand’s heritage director, tells us that around 1805 Napoleon appointed its founder, Marie-Étienne Nitot, imperial jeweler, and set out to rescue the ears of wheat, laurel wreaths and other symbols of the Roman Empire: “Like new European Caesar requires the empress and the ladies of the court to wear them in the form of diadems. “This is how they became a fashion accessory,” she points out. But how to explain the success of a tiara, which if it is good it must be heavy, in our liquid days? Claire says that fashion was replicated in each period. “At the stage art deco, which only lasted 10 years, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg brought some wonderful stones and commissioned a very modern model, which Maria Theresa, the current Duchess, still uses. “That tiara inspired that of Wonder Woman, the first female comic book character with superpowers, concentrated, by the way, in the tiara.” Claire neither confirms nor denies that this piece has been redefined as a feminist symbol, but she stands up in the chair and says: “The weight of the jewelry changes the balance of the body. When you put on a headband, you change your posture and elevate your attitude. Anyone is transfigured with a tiara. We see it when they try them on: the jewel forces them to straighten their bearing, to raise their head, and to adopt the gait of a queen or a dancer.”
![Sketch of a diadem that Eugenia de Montijo commissioned for her goddaughter Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg on the occasion of her wedding to Alfonso XIII.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/2IkD8cypgzDntpnVprmeAlGxmSU=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KMSA5F3IKFHLNJXKA5JA63MFCY.jpg)
The minimum time to make a tiara is around a year and a half. Chaumet’s clients have plenty of money, but not patience. They want them in eight months. Benoît Verhulle, workshop manager of the house, which has to put its artisans to work in pairs—two jewelers, two crimpers, two polishers—to deliver on time. “A baby is formed in nine months, that’s what I need to do things right.”
![Jean-Marc Mansvelt, CEO of Chaumet, at the Chaumet 'hôtel particulier', at 12 Place Vendôme.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/KDsvJT9LkPNNMKjQaKZwAU0QLxU=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/2LLCOH7YUZC35GNTFTGG3SPIUU.jpg)
Counting since 1780, the year Chaumet was founded, Verhulle is the 13th workshop manager. This means that each of his predecessors has remained in that position for an average of 20 years. Under his gaze the diamonds are cut and set and the house’s collections take shape, but also the most extravagant orders, those known as “specials”. For example, moving wings for a headband made from family jewels. “It was a bit of an Asterix helmet,” recalls the craftsman. His team works on the tiara for the Chinese businesswoman, but also on a diadem for a large European family. “A woman wants to give it to her daughter-in-law, who is going to give her the first male grandchild after having brought several girls into the world,” says Verhulle. In some families things seem to remain the same as 250 years ago.
![Detail of jeweler's hands in the workshop.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/WxH2bwdHezScdKtEpyv4JRhEP4A=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/WE6TMTO4IFGNFJNOOWDEO7S7GA.jpg)
The artisans work with computers and 3D printing that contrast with iron and wooden benches and tools that are more than 150 years old. From digital measurements they move to manual adjustments, and vice versa, in a back-and-forth dance that illustrates how fine jewelry pieces are manufactured today. “In luxury there must always be human hands and time. For the center of a headband, a necklace or a ring we always use our hands, we leave the 3D computer design for the most repetitive parts of the pieces,” says Verhulle.
![Claire Gannet, Chaumet's heritage director, in front of the prototype of an emerald tiara.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/XS4QmLer2cdB1cChmxHbueKN2uE=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/WDWCWVGAIJA5NNIW2GPG6IX3IU.jpg)
A life-size red head rests on some jewelers’ table. Verhulle explains that they are the scanned heads of clients waiting for their tiaras. This reduces testing and ensures that the jewel fits perfectly to each anatomy. The use of the scanner has revealed to them that not all heads are the same, European heads are oval, and Asian heads are rounder. Some wear tiaras as a crown, others on their foreheads. But in almost all cases the workshop manager finds a common point. “The jewel must impose.”
![One of the photos that remember what the old workshops and artisans of the house founded in 1780 were like.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/W5wDy0GxATU4qKW3NCJE2SUXWbA=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/RG6LCPNUZZHBXEUMDGM6AFXPOA.jpg)
Chaumet is the only major jewelry brand that maintains its artisans in Place Vendôme, exactly at number 12. During the 19th century this place had the highest concentration of goldsmiths per square meter in France. “If in the past jewelers were called to Versailles or to Parisian mansions, during the 19th century the movement was reversed, many merchants opened their own houses and the clientele crowded into the square,” says Marie Claude Sicard in her book. Luxury, lies and marketing (GG, 2007).
![Thibault Billoir, curator of the Chaumet archives.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/z3K4Guwq9eRjF5RdbzB5yVKmKkA=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/7WVAQXZEHJAYDBYW3TZ2J7T2AA.jpg)
The tiara room is on the first floor. It is a kind of fitting room with the walls covered to the ceiling by hundreds of prototypes that have been fitted to illustrious heads for more than two centuries. Chopin died in this room in 1849, a few days after composing his last mazurka, and—they say—looking at the square. Precisely the same views enjoyed by the artisans working one floor above. The workshops that used to be below and behind have moved to the main floor, with the windows open to the square presided over by the Vendôme column. “To work with gemstones, natural light is essential,” says Mansvelt. “Opening the workshops to the square has been like opening the kitchens of great chefs, a way of showing the world our savoir faire”, confirms Verhulle.
![Modern computers and 3D printers coexist with ancient tools that can last more than a century.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/d5B13qO_KhyU_M0exTE3dhRC9XE=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KZTBEXQC5NFRTH2QMNCETLW6TU.jpg)
Chaumet’s first market is Asia, and the usual clientele of royal houses and large European families is now joined by “the new money” of the fortunes amassed by technology companies. Against all odds, their investments are neither virtual nor volatile, but solid and with specific weight. They do not buy bitcoins or ethereums, but gold and diamonds. “Jewellery has an aura of eternity, it does not age, it does not lose value. “If there is a war or a revolution, you abandon everything but run away with the jewels,” reflects the CEO of Chaumet. Money is cowardly and always looks for safe havens. Like all life.
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