A selection of designs from the personal jewelry of Suzanne Belperron (1900-1983). After launching her career in Paris in 1919, Belperron was one of a few female jewelry designers of her time and the only one to have a company in her own name. She conceived of her designs with her clients’ unique personalities in mind and the pieces she chose to make for herself continue to embody her own enigmatic allure and confidence. Despite her success and influence, she shunned publicity. Asked why she never signed her jewelry, she replied, “My style is my signature”.

Belperron’s humble upbringing left her unencumbered by certain bourgeois conventions, freeing her to choose comparatively modest materials for her jewels. Favoring the powder blue hue and creamy texture of blue chalcedony, she offset the unique stones with bright yellow gold and brilliant diamonds.

As a woman, Suzanne Belperron was adamant that a jewel should be comfortable to wear as well as beautiful. Her earrings, bracelets and rings, while large and bold, are famously comfortable.

Belperron would scatter handfuls of loose stones onto her desk, playing with them until she could discern a pattern, much as some couturiers drape garments directly upon a model. One of her suppliers remembered that she favored gems of “unusual charm and character,” and once she picked up a stone that had “winked” at her from among a pile, she never returned it, so certain was she of her taste.

In 1938, Harper’s Bazaar captured a portrait of the young artist, “Madame Belperron…A young woman with inscrutable eyes and remarkably beautiful hands, who believes that jewelry should be personal and becoming rather than valuable.”