Threading time: When Chinese couture meets high jewelry

A silk cord is but a small fastening that secures clothing to the body. But across Chinese clothing history, this modest detail has carried changing ideas of beauty, ritual, and self-expression. The quieter survivor of time has become the point of departure for a high jewellery collection by a leading global Chinese jewellery house. At Chow Tai Fook’s “2026 High Jewellery” exhibition recently held in Shanghai, the subtler structural elements of Chinese couture such as this silk cord alongside knotted button, cuff and edging were presented in the form of earrings, necklaces, rings, and more. Here, before the eye meets the stone, it met a line, a curve, a movement — once floating with fabric but now held in precious metal through exacting handwork. Themed “Chinese Couture”, this new collection unfolded through five sections — Cord, Jade Ombre, Ribbon, Button Knot, and Yun (cloud collar), drawing from the shapes and materials of ancient attire, and more importantly, their relationship with the body. In an intricate way, the Chinese couture was revealed in gold and light. At a time when hard luxury houses both home and abroad have been drawing from Chinese culture and turning it into globally resonant creations, Chow Tai Fook High Jewellery might be offering an answer with this new collection. Beyond a dragon robe: the craft of Chinese couture This was the second “High Jewellery” collection by Chow Tai Fook, created by Creative Director Nicholas Lieou. Although the brand created bespoke high jewellery for decades, the institutionalized formal collection was launched last year, as part of the broader effort in its centennial transformation. The idea began at a Chinese heritage apparel exhibition in Beijing, as Lieou told Jing Daily. The prominently displayed dragon robes and elaborate imperial embroidery gave him a vague starting point for the collection, but they felt too overwhelming and closely associated with the elite. It was not until he saw, in an inconspicuous corner, an image showing the laborious extraction of natural plant pigments used to dye silk that the idea began taking shape. “I thought this is the very foundation of the apparel itself. So that's where we started,” he said. Hence instead of reproducing the imperial symbols like dragon robes which would privilege one aspect or dynasty over others, he and his team looked at the craft behind them. There, Lieou found a deeper connection between haute couture and high jewellery: Both are intimate disciplines shaped by painstaking handwork, where proportion, structure, and tension determine how the final piece looks and feels on the body. Besides craft, “Chinese Couture” offers a natural framework. As one of the most intimate and emotionally charged material forms of self-expression like jewelry, it draped on and shaped around the body, carrying a strong sense of personal identity and cultural emotion. “They really ‘go hand in hand,’ as they are both about tailoring and hand-making — tailored to custom to that one person and that attention to detail is incredible,” Lieou said during the interview. Craft is also one of the foundations on which Chow Tai Fook was built. According to Catherine Yu, General Manager of High Jewellery at Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, craft is embedded in the brand’s deep “time DNA.” In this sense, craft connects the thousands of years of Chinese couture, the high jewelry world, and the brand’s core ethos. Distilling the past into modern irreplicability The creative process was tough since China’s clothing history is vast enough to overwhelm any single collection. Based on the ideology of craft, Lieou and his design team distilled the expansive sartorial heritage to the five recurring elements that had survived and evolved across dynasties: jade, silk cord, ribbon, button knot, and cloud collar. In this way, he approached the theme as a long-evolving system of costume art and, more important, a cultural and craft memory. “Cord,” traced back to the raw silk thread itself before being woven into brocade, which was the very starting point for Lieou. In Chinese culture, silk cord evokes connection, continuity, and the coexistence of softness and resilience. “We wanted to pay homage to 5,000 years of Chinese silk by creating a diamond silk thread,” Lieou said. That was where the challenge lay: creating a continuous filament with diamonds with no seen seams and clasp because the silk thread is made from one long piece from the silkworm. A featured final work is a Cord necklace that conforms to the body and moves with it without twisting or appearing rigid, centered on an ultra-rare 56.74-carat Melo pearl prized for its porcelain-like glow and distinctive flame pattern. Building on the exploration of Cord, the Ribbon series turns to silk ribbons and braids that were once worn in the hair or tied at the waist in ancient times and have endured into the present because of versatile ways of tying. The ethereal ribbon necklaces and earrings on display reinterpret silk gauze through delicate filigree craftsmanship in 22K gold, diamonds, and pearls. The millennia-old filigree tradition, a master technique by the house, brings a warm, restrained luster of gold to the pieces, and also enough strength to support their intricate structures. While cord and ribbon gave Chinese dress a sense of flow, the button knot keeps that flow in place by joining loop and knot to fasten the garment. In the Button Knot series, minimal gold lines and Burmese jadeite cabochons explore the relationship between softness and structure as well as function and beauty. “Yun,” the cloud collar, is another element and perhaps the most poetic one. Lieou’s team didn’t reproduce the elaborate cloud patterns but isolated the gentle downward curves. Rendered in gold, jadeite, and colored gemstones, the pared-back lines preserve a sense of movement while leaving room for negative space central to Eastern aesthetics. Beyond rings and brooches, the series also includes a 24K gold handbag, a work that pushes beyond conventional jewelry categories and hence showcases the house’s experimental mindset. Jade Ombre offers a less conventional reading of jadeite, a stone long associated with noble character. The series pairs jadeite with diamonds and emeralds. Both jadeite and emeralds derive their color from chromium to reveal the stone’s natural tonal gradations formed over hundreds of millions of years. Subtle gold settings recede from view, allowing the shifting, ink-wash greens to carry the composition. As no two pieces of jadeite share the same internal gradations, this natural irreplicability inspired Lieou to place the stone at the center of composition, an approach rare among luxury jewelers. The creativity in design and materials is what Lieou has long been exploring. With experience in high and bespoke jewellery across London and New York, including work for the 2019 GemGenève fair and Sotheby’s 2020 diamond collection, his practice is defined by clean lines, technical precision, and a deep respect for traditional craft and goldwork. His international background allows him to interpret Chinese iconography through a contemporary lens while his layered reading of the past keeps the narrative firmly grounded in roots and memory rather than imagery of surface symbols. It is the combination of radical material innovation and cultural depth that makes his approach difficult to replicate, and in itself precious. His role is extracting the essential logic of cultural elements and giving them a contemporary form that remains culturally specific without appearing antiquarian or overly literal. That’s what makes the brand’s two “High Jewellery” collections, from architecture to couture, more about presenting in a modern way a cultural memory and craft aesthetics, thus giving Chinese high jewelry a structured creative language instead of a series of isolated cultural references. Humble translation + centennial craft = cultural authorship Humble translation, which Lieou and his design team have been pursuing, means restraint, accuracy, craft detail, cultural sensitivity, and the construction of an inner world. “Humble translation for us is not about being loud. And there's a lot of restraint,” he noted. This restraint is not separate from accuracy, as control over proportion, negative space, movement, and material nuance are required. For example, the links used in the diamond silk cord must strictly be an odd number to align with historical correctness. “It’s all these small, tiny detailing that we needed to make sure everything was correct,” he added. This philosophy of humility points to time as the ultimate luxury. High jewelry usually requires working two to three years in advance. For example, the "Jade Ombre" project alone took 3 years of meticulous planning. According to Lieou, they would completely scrap and recast an 80%-finished piece if the execution or stone mapping doesn't feel entirely right. That dedication to time is increasingly rare amid today’s hurried consumption of culture. Lieou also noted that management gives the design team complete creative freedom, with no timing or pricing constraints. Such an approach to jewelry making is sustained by Chow Tai Fook’s centennial craft base. Founded in 1929, the house has decades of access to exceptional diamonds and gemstones, including the CTF Pink Star. In 1973, it became a De Beers Global Sightholder, giving it direct access to rough diamonds and helping establish it as a major diamond importer in Asia. Its own production facilities, vertically integrated manufacturing-to-retail value chain, and in-house workshops together form the foundation for building long-term cultural authority. “Chow Tai Fook operates workshops in Hong Kong and Shunde of Guangdong with around 200 master craftsmen. Our gemstone sourcing and craftsmanship are equally strong. These capabilities position us well for a credible and formidable presence in high jewellery,” said Yu during the interview with Jing Daily. Hence the work at the exhibition not just reveals visual pleasure but masterly techniques – flow, fastening, layering reinterpreted through gold, gemstones, filigree, and materials deeply rooted in Chinese culture. This champions Eastern aesthetics through culturally rooted, world-class craftsmanship, while expanding the brand’s presence in the global high jewelry segment. The simultaneous and mutually reinforcing efforts support a larger transition from a brand known for scale, gold retail, and trust toward one redefining Chinese luxury globally by showcasing the contemporary Chinese culture, innovation and exquisite craftsmanship to the world. As Yu put it, “High jewelry is the pinnacle of brand capacity in terms of creativity, craftsmanship, gemstone power, and ultimately, desirability. It will also increase the loyalty of ultra-high-net-worth clients by multiple times, in addition to establishing a structural narrative in a global landscape that has been entirely dominated and defined by Western houses.” Venture into structured high jewelry Luxury consumers have grown more selective in recent years amid economic uncertainties and luxury slowdown, and meanwhile focus more on authenticity and emotional value. So high jewelry needs to offer not only material value, but also artistry, rarity, cultural legitimacy, and emotional permanence that speaks to them. Establishing a structural annual high jewelry release rooted in Chinese culture is part of Chow Tai Fook’s wider brand transformation – the biggest makeover in decades. As the brand accelerates its global and high-end positioning ahead of its centenary, “High Jewellery” has become a strategic step in shaping its next chapter, because it reflects not only its growing innovation in jewellery at a time when increasingly selective global luxury consumers are drawn to rare, one-of-a-kind pieces, but also the house's ambition to deepen its presence in the high-end market and develop into a leading global Chinese jewelry house with a stronger voice on the international stage. In this move, Chow Tai Fook High Jewellery is differentiating itself in a competitive field of culturally attuned jewelry narratives. Since the brand has long been woven into the daily lives and major milestones of Chinese families, its storytelling feels lived and emotionally rooted compared with Eastern narratives by Western houses who approach Chinese culture in a more static way and therefore generate pieces that tend to sit in a safe. “Chinese Couture” extends the direction set by “Timeless Harmony,” the jeweler’s first publicly released ”High Jewellery” collection. If the collection last year translated Chinese architecture into jewelry, this year’s moves closer to the body, drawing on the craft, materials, and structure of Chinese dress. Each time, it begins not with grand totems or elaborate piling, but with an unusual point of departure — something raw yet delicate. With the debut of these two official “High Jewellery” collections, Chow Tai Fook High Jewellery has brought a breath of fresh air to the industry. Guided by its brand essence of showcasing the beauty of China to the world through exquisite jewelry, the house has achieved a creative synthesis that originates from Chinese culture yet speaks with an international vision and contemporary design language. Ultimately, these collections suggest a broader shift in the value of high jewellery: from a race over who owns the rarest stones to a more layered competition over who can create cultural authorship. The brand's exploration reaches beyond the reinterpretation of Chinese culture, offering the industry a new model of value creation and expanding the boundaries of what high jewelry can carry.

Threading time: When Chinese couture meets high jewelry

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Threading time: When Chinese couture meets high jewelry

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