The rise of bejewelled cufflinks, from Dior to Boucheron

From up-and-coming brands to the big houses of Paris’s Place Vendôme, jewellers are creating cufflinks with a distinct aesthetic. It’s an influence that’s being spotted at the upper echelons of the sector — high jewellery — known for exclusive and handcrafted one-off pieces. Embracing elements of fashion and tailoring, bejewelled cufflinks channel a growing trend to make high jewellery more wearable and versatile, not to mention suitable for both male and female clients.

In 2022, Dior introduced cufflinks and men’s brooches (previously deemed fashion accessories) to its high jewellery collection Galons for the first time. Evoking decorative ribbons, the cufflinks were fashioned from a mix of fancy cut diamonds, all set in rakish asymmetry, a design signature of artistic director Victoire de Castellane.

Boucheron’s more recent Power of Couture collection riffs off royal ceremonial attire and features bejewelled bows and epaulettes, but also rock-crystal buttons. Attached to garments via an old-fashioned spiral shaped fastener, the diamond-studded buttons can be pinned to cuffs or jacket sleeves, as well as to a collar or entwined in your hair.

Elsewhere, De Beers’ latest Forces of Nature high jewellery collection features cufflinks in the shape of a buffalo, its head and horns bedecked with a smattering of rough and polished white and brown diamonds, for a total of 3.34 carats. Meanwhile, a pair of Fortitude cufflinks contrasts matte titanium with two striking shield-shape diamonds of nearly two carats, paired with five round brilliants on the underside. De Beers said both designs have been sold to male clients, who were drawn to their modernity, creative diamond cuts, animal symbolism and the pieces’ comfort, despite their generous volumes.

Emma Willis, a specialist tailor for men’s and women’s shirts in London’s Mayfair, is not surprised that bedecked cufflinks — and the double-cuff shirts that they adorn — are having a moment for men and women. It’s all part of a fashion cycle that has shifted away from looking too casual, she says. “People are now finding it’s cooler to be smart — to stand out and raise your game. No doubt in insecure times where people really need to be competitive again — to really look smarter than the next person and inspire confidence — [that] has a lot to do with it.”

They’re a way to blend creativity with functionality, offering a personal touch to a traditionally male-dominated accessory’

Women too are upping their game. Willis cites the example of a female client from the Middle East, a senior executive at a bank, who recently ordered several double-cuff shirts to wear underneath her traditional clothing — with the idea that her cufflinks would peek out from her sleeve. “She felt like she was putting herself above the men with a button cuff,” says Willis, whose store on Jermyn Street stocks a pair of gold acorn cufflinks, featuring intricate, hand-carved capsules (£2,900).

At the heart of this trend is craftsmanship. British jewellery brand Anoona was launched in 2023 with handcrafted, ornamental stones such as chrysoprase, tiger’s eye and pink opal. These are shaped into sensual discs — or what creative director Sadhbh Roux-Fouillet calls “Smarties shapes”, a reference to the popular chocolate sweets.

In addition to pendants, earrings and rings, the stones also adorn Anoona’s double-sided cufflinks, and come in 23 different stones (in this design) studded with either diamonds or sapphires (from £3,600). The underlying stone notably needs to be hand-cut multiple times to create a matching set of four discs. “You can’t get the same colour again and people see them as really beautiful pieces of art,” says Roux-Fouillet. A diamond-set black-and-white agate version will, for example, work fabulously for black tie, while more feminine styles are sculpted into floral motifs.

California-based jeweller Lugano, which recently planted a flag in London’s Mayfair, also creates jewelled cufflinks. A mismatched design coolly pairs a hexagon-cut white diamond with a matching yellow one (inquire for prices), for a total of 3.55 carats, each stone rimmed in black onyx.

Over at Burlington Arcade, jeweller Lily Gabriella says her female clients are increasingly approaching her for bespoke cufflinks. “They’re a way to blend creativity with functionality, offering a personal touch to a traditionally male-dominated accessory,” Gabriella says. “This reflects the growing desire to redefine fashion norms and express individuality through design.” Among Gabriella’s commissions was a mother-of-pearl number set in rose gold, while another was designed around two rough citrine clusters, their striking yellow hues making their own statement.

The essence of jewellery, after all, is ultimately the stones, an idea that’s been beautifully channelled into several rare cufflinks by Mouawad, a family-run house that dates back to 1890 and which has a long-standing legacy of exceptional and rare stones. Cue its cufflinks set with head-turning single stones: an emerald-cut diamond design totalling 2.4 carats, or another head-turning oval cabochon ruby design totalling 27 carats, trimmed in three carats of diamonds.

In some circles, watches are still seen as the only jewellery a man can buy for himself, and some watchmakers are parlaying that sentiment into branded cufflinks. Among the biggest horological debuts this year was Patek Philippe’s square shaped Cubitus collection, which the Swiss watchmaker complemented with a pair of matching cufflinks in the same distinct shape.

That same month, the niche watchmaker Andersen Genève — known for its meticulously handcrafted dials — hosted a cufflinks design competition with the School of Applied Arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a renowned Swiss watchmaking hub.

The competition invited more than 40 students to participate; they were aged between 15 and 25 years old — a demographic not typically likely to wear a double-cuff shirt, let alone come across many cufflinks. Anderson Genève’s chief executive Pierre-Alexandre Aeschlimann says the idea came after clients were constantly asking the brand to make cufflinks. “They see it as a set: watch, cufflinks, pen,” says Aeschlimann, adding that cufflinks share the same elements of a watch. “It’s all about details and craftsmanship.”

One of the three winners of the competition was Anthime Chatagny, who created a futuristic design that will get made and riffed on Andersen Genève’s expertise in world timer watches. He has never donned cufflinks before but is really into watches as a form of men’s jewellery. “The competition really inspired me to start wearing cufflinks,” he says. “It’s really a beautiful object.” 

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