Chow Tai Fook unveils Chinese Couture high jewelry in Shanghai

Chow Tai Fook unveiled Chinese Couture in Shanghai on June 26, 2026, presenting more than 100 high-jewelry pieces in a collection meant to translate Chinese dressmaking into diamond form. Creative director of high jewelry Nicholas Lieou introduced the range at the launch, where Sonia Cheng, vice-chairman and executive director of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, and global ambassador Yang Yang were in attendance. The brand is pushing deeper into a category that remains largely defined by European maisons, from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels to Bulgari, Chaumet and Boucheron.

Lieou’s point of departure was not costume shorthand but construction: the silk ribbons, cord fastenings and other building blocks that give Chinese clothing its structure. One necklace re-creates a traditional ribbon in yellow gold and uses filigree to suggest the sheen and flexibility of silk, while another cord-inspired piece centers a very rare Melo pearl, an organic stone prized as much for its scarcity as for its soft, flame-like surface. The result feels less like a quotation of Chinese style than a technical translation of it, with the setting and metalwork carrying the narrative as much as the stones.

Chinese Couture follows Chow Tai Fook’s first high-jewelry outing last year, Timeless Harmony, which debuted in Hangzhou and drew on Chinese architecture and philosophy. The company said that collection was created by its in-house high-jewelry workshop and design studio with nationally certified artisans, and that it took inspiration from seven themes: Lotus, Heaven & Earth, Joie, Palace, Roof Tiles, Gate and the Great Wall. In the company’s telling, that launch marked a milestone in Chow Tai Fook’s nearly century-long history and signaled its bid to speak to global collectors in a language rooted in Chinese cultural memory.

The Shanghai debut also landed alongside a broader retail reset. Chow Tai Fook has opened a five-storey new image store at 550 Nanjing East Road, with high jewelry on the fourth floor and repair and custom services on the fifth, while the brand’s wider Chinese-motif collections reinforce the same heritage-led message across the business. In a market where high jewelry is still measured against Western reference points, Chow Tai Fook is making the case that Chinese craft can supply its own vocabulary of luxury.