Some plants behave themselves. Ivy does not.
It climbs, curls and spreads wherever it finds a foothold, ignoring neat boundaries in favour of its own path. That unruly quality is precisely what made ivy one of Frédéric Boucheron’s favourite plants and, from the 1870s onwards, a recurring presence within the Maison’s jewellery. Now, Boucheron returns to the motif with Lierre de Paris, a collection of nine white-gold and diamond creations designed by Creative Director Claire Choisne.
The starting point is nature, but not the perfectly manicured version of it. Here, ivy becomes a symbol of freedom: something persistent, organic and unconcerned with convention.
Ivy first appears in the Boucheron archives in 1870, before Frédéric Boucheron incorporated it into the first design for the Maison’s Question Mark necklace in 1879. That piece was realised by Boucheron’s artisans two years later, in 1881.
The motif continued to evolve. During the 1920s, its slender stems were translated into fine gold lines in keeping with the changing aesthetic of the period. In 2012, the High Jewellery collection Lierre de Paris offered another interpretation, while ivy has also appeared in Boucheron’s 2025 and 2026 Histoire de Style collections, this time scaled into XXL pieces that appear to grow across the body.
Across each iteration, the challenge remains much the same: translating something inherently irregular and alive into precious materials without losing the sense of movement that makes it compelling in the first place.
Choisne’s latest Lierre de Paris pieces keep that naturalism front and centre.
The collection includes three rings, among them a double-finger design and two smaller versions in which three ivy leaves unfurl across the hand. A pendant necklace repeats the design of the smaller ring, while a flexible necklace dispenses with a conventional clasp, wrapping around the neck more like a branch.
Two pairs of asymmetrical earrings — one clip-on, the other pendant — offer several ways to wear the motif. Brooches complete the collection, using a spiral fastening system that allows them to be placed on clothing or worn in the hair, individually or together.
The result is jewellery that appears less fixed than it first seems. Leaves creep across fingers, stems curl around the neck and brooches can shift position, giving the pieces some of the unpredictability of the plant that inspired them.
That sense of movement depends heavily on Boucheron’s craftsmanship.
Each ivy leaf is fully pavé-set with diamonds, while the reverse is delicately open-worked to increase the play of light through the stones. Veining is traced through the structure of the leaves, with softly rounded tips and carefully balanced arrangements designed to maintain a lifelike quality.
Rather than simply borrowing the outline of ivy, Boucheron Lierre de Paris attempts to capture its behaviour: how it twists, overlaps, climbs and refuses to sit entirely still.
More than a century and a half after ivy first entered the Maison’s visual vocabulary, its appeal is much the same as it was for Frédéric Boucheron. It is elegant, certainly, but never overly controlled — a piece of the natural world that looks most convincing when allowed to grow wild.
For more from the world of jewellery and luxury, visit our fashion pages and follow us on Instagram.
