Charles Leung is reimagining the 245-year-old maison’s nature-themed aesthetic – and giving back to the environment.
Making a storied Place Vendôme maison desirable, cool and relevant today is a task that Chaumet chief executive Charles Leung is taking in stride.
The 245-year-old jewelry house is synonymous with tiaras, Emperor Napoleon and his wife Josephine — enviable touchpoints, but not exactly ones that scream “now.” Enter Leung, who made history last year as the first Asian CEO of an LVMH-owned brand and is among the few minorities holding top jobs in the luxury sector. A Chaumet veteran who has been with the company since 2006 — minus a stint running fellow LVMH marque Fred for a few years — he is credited with introducing the maison to the Chinese market and expanding its global operations beyond France.
Leung has a clear vision for the historic house. “We have done enough for the brand’s legitimacy; no need to continue doing that,” he says bluntly. “We don’t want to lose that, but what are the other possibilities for the brand? There’s a need to make Chaumet more connected to the present world.”
Jewelry has been one of the more resilient categories at LVMH lately, especially compared to fashion and leather goods, which have continued to take a hammering. In the first half of 2025, the luxury group saw an 8% year-on-year decline in revenue for those two latter segments, and only a 1% drop in its watch and jewelry division. That means it’s likely to put jewelry in the spotlight going forward.
Into the wild
Chaumet’s new Jewels by Nature high-jewelry collection, which launched over the summer in Marbella, Spain, offers a blueprint for Leung’s vision. Nature is a time-honored theme in jewelry design, and international maisons both past and present have celebrated it to sparkling effect. But Leung seeks an homage to nature that will differentiate Chaumet while also honoring the house’s long-standing identity of superb craftsmanship and generationally transmitted skills.
“Our founder called himself a ‘naturalist jeweler,’” says Leung. “But I asked myself, ‘What have we done for nature?’ I would like to really talk about nature differently.”
One way he’s doing so is a new partnership with environmental group WWF, which the brand announced around the same time as the Jewels by Nature launch. The two parties have joint programs in the works for France, Japan and China, the first of which involves forest conservation in Chaumet’s home country. Chaumet has already been collaborating with environmental organization Reforest’Action to regenerate the heritage-protected Chantilly forest since 2023.
The next chapter(s)
The 54-piece Jewels by Nature line underscores this narrative with its three themed chapters. The first is Everlasting, which features bejeweled flora such as clovers, ferns, oats and field stars. Those last two find expression in an incredible yellow-gold necklace with sculpted field stars of white gold and yellow diamonds, including three cushion-cut stones totaling 8.32 carats. The piece, which took 1,300 hours to create, is part of a suite that includes a transformable pair of asymmetrical earrings and a brooch.
If Everlasting celebrates nature’s ability to renew and regenerate, the second chapter, Ephemeral, highlights its fragility and impermanence. The V-shaped Carnation necklace imagines the flower in an unexpected palette of sapphires that range from deep to sky blue, while the exquisite Sweetshrub necklace is a blush-pink masterpiece of perfectly matched freshwater pearls that culminate in a 44.23-carat spinel with a deep pink hue and violet accents.
“Ephemeral reminds us about the passage of time,” explains Leung. “That we have to cherish beauty, which will not last but will come back. Here, nature teaches us a lot.”
Finally, the Reviving chapter captures resurgent nature in bejeweled magnolias and dahlias, but also bees, dragonflies and tiny birds — what Leung calls “the little actors that make this ecosystem complete [and] lively while hopefully telling the story of nature.”
Abuzz with change
Earlier this year, Chaumet announced a commitment to gold traceability for all its collections, kicking off the project with a new pendant in its iconic Bee de Chaumet fine-jewelry collection. All the jewel’s components — chain, bee pendant, clasp and rings — are of 100% traceable gold from sustainable sources. Leung emphasizes the challenge of supervising and coordinating this task, as various workshops were involved in sourcing the separate elements.
Leung was also behind the overhaul of the Bee de Chaumet name from its former moniker, Bee My Love. LVMH’s first-half results cited Bee de Chaumet as a notable focus for the jeweler. The rebrand aims to move its jewelry away from now-outmoded notions of love and commitment, and toward themes of community and like-mindedness, says Leung. And it seems to be working: At a recent client event in Korea, he relates, a woman in her 40s purchased five Bee de Chaumet pieces for her friends.
“This sense of friendship, family and community is undervalued in jewelry,” he says. “We talk so much about love, engagement, forever. It’s important as well, but this is life.”
Jewelry customers today are seeking creativity and value, he adds, but also wearability and investment potential — something that will only continue in this challenging and uncertain economic climate. “They’re looking for something that really suits them and which they can wear more often, not just once in a lifetime.”
Main image: Chaumet CEO Charles Leung. (Chaumet)
Source : Rapaport