Chanel taps Marie-Laure Cérède to lead jewelry creation at Place Vendôme

Chanel is making a clear bet that high jewelry is not a decorative sideline, but a proving ground for authority. Marie-Laure Cérède, a veteran of Cartier and Harry Winston, will take over the house’s jewelry creation studio in October 2026, overseeing Chanel’s precious jewelry and high jewelry from 18 Place Vendôme.

The move reads as continuity rather than spectacle, which is exactly the point. Cérède will report to Frédéric Grangié, president of watches and fine jewelry, and work with teams in Paris and Geneva. She steps into a role left open since the death of Patrice Leguéreau on November 12, 2024, after 15 years leading Chanel’s jewelry creation studio. In a market where the loudest launch is not always the strongest signal, Chanel is choosing a figure with deep credentials in the old guard of Parisian and Swiss jewelry making.

That matters because Chanel’s power in this category is built as much on place as on product. Its 18 Place Vendôme address houses the Creation Studios, the high-jewelry workshop, the Patrimoine and the boutique, tying the brand directly to the square that defines Paris fine jewelry. Chanel reopened the renovated address in May 2022, exactly 90 years after Gabrielle Chanel’s 1932 Bijoux de Diamants collection. The symbolism is unmistakable: this is a house that wants its jewelry to be read not as an accessory to fashion, but as part of the brand’s core inheritance.

The financial logic is just as sharp. Morgan Stanley estimates that Chanel’s watches and fine jewelry business makes up around 5 percent of turnover, nearly $1 billion in annual revenue. Chanel has also said it invested more than $700 million last year in areas including leather goods and watches and fine-jewelry expertise, a spend that underscores how seriously the house treats the category’s long game. In luxury, jewelry is where a brand proves it can command permanence, not just attention.

Cérède’s appointment lands in that context, with Chanel reinforcing the craftsmanship infrastructure that supports its most exclusive clients. For the ultra-wealth customer, the message is simple: the house is not chasing a reset. It is tightening its hold on the codes, workshop discipline and provenance that keep a legacy brand desirable at the very top of the market.