Chanel names Marie-Laure Cérède to lead jewelry design refresh

Chanel is handing its jewelry language to a veteran whose résumé spans Cartier and Harry Winston, a choice that suggests more than a routine succession. By naming Marie-Laure Cérède director of its jewelry creation studio, the house is signaling that the next chapter of its precious jewelry and high jewelry may lean harder into pieces designed to be worn, layered and lived in, not only saved for gala moments.

Cérède will join Chanel in October 2026 and report to Frédéric Grangié, president of Watches & Fine Jewelry. Her remit covers both precious jewelry and high jewelry, with work split between teams in Paris and Geneva. Grangié said her “imagination and deep expertise in craft and knowledge of gemology” would take Chanel “in exciting new directions,” while keeping faith with the house’s balance of heritage, emotion, audacity and restraint.

The appointment lands after a difficult creative gap. Patrice Leguéreau, who led Chanel’s jewelry creation studio for 15 years after joining the house in 2009, died in November 2024. His tenure helped give Chanel jewelry a distinctive visual vocabulary, built around codes that translated Gabrielle Chanel’s modernism into diamonds, gold and graphic forms. The challenge now is to evolve that vocabulary without sanding off its edge.

That question matters because Chanel is no longer treating jewelry as a supporting act. In its 2025 results, the house pointed to “unprecedented investments in our savoir-faire” and a year of creative momentum, underscoring how seriously it has been building the category through new boutiques and new product energy. At 18 Place Vendôme in Paris, Chanel’s creation studios and high jewelry workshop remain the brand’s most tangible link to Parisian craft authority, and the address itself carries the weight of the house’s ambitions.

The new direction will also be measured against Chanel’s own history. Gabrielle Chanel created BIJOUX DE DIAMANTS in 1932, which Chanel describes as the world’s first high jewelry collection, and the maison still frames that lineage as a starting point rather than a museum piece. Today, COCO CRUSH shows how Chanel can turn a familiar motif into something sharper and more wearable, pairing the quilted pattern with BEIGE GOLD. That is the lane Cérède inherits: a chance to make Chanel’s jewelry feel more modular, stackable and day-to-day, while keeping the graphic confidence that makes a Chanel jewel recognizable from across a room.