Chanel names Marie-Laure Cérède to lead fine jewelry creation

Chanel has chosen Marie-Laure Cérède, one of luxury jewelry’s most seasoned creative leaders, to run its Jewelry Creation Studio, a clear signal that the house is treating fine jewelry as a strategic growth arena, not a side category. Cérède will join in October and oversee Chanel’s precious jewelry and high-jewelry creations, working between the company’s teams in Paris and Geneva while reporting to Frédéric Grangié, Chanel’s president of watches and fine jewelry.

The appointment carries immediate competitive weight because Cérède arrives with credentials that read like a map of modern diamond-jewelry power. She began at Cartier, spent 14 years at Harry Winston leading artistic direction for jewelry and watchmaking, then returned to Cartier in 2016 as creative director of jewelry and watchmaking. In a market where design talent can shape brand heat as decisively as stones or carat weight, Chanel is putting a well-known specialist at the center of its precious-jewelry ambitions.

The move also follows a difficult transition. Patrice Leguéreau, who led Chanel’s Fine Jewelry Creation Studio for 15 years, died on November 12, 2024, at age 54. Leguéreau had joined Chanel in 2009 after earlier stints at Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, helping define the house’s jewelry language for a decade and a half. Cérède now inherits that legacy, along with the challenge of extending Chanel’s codes without blunting them.

Alain Wertheimer and Leena Nair praised Cérède in a joint statement as one of the most talented, refined, and accomplished creative directors of her generation. Grangié said her creativity, gemology knowledge, and balance of heritage, emotion, audacity, and restraint would bring a new perspective to Chanel’s codes. That wording matters: Chanel is not just filling a vacancy, it is positioning the studio to sharpen its identity against rivals that have long used high jewelry as a stage for craftsmanship, authority, and status.

The timing is telling. Industry estimates cited from Morgan Stanley put Chanel’s Watches & Fine Jewellery business at about 5% of turnover, or nearly $1 billion a year, a meaningful figure inside a group that reported 2025 revenues of $19.3 billion, up 2% from 2024. Chanel also said it opened more than 40 boutiques in 2025 and invested over $700 million to acquire long-standing suppliers. Taken together, the numbers show a house willing to spend on control, craftsmanship, and visibility. In that context, Cérède’s hire looks less like succession planning than a bid to win a more competitive race for diamond-jewelry credibility.