Fred Samuel, who based the jewelry home Fred in Paris in 1936, counted famend display screen stars, society darlings and artists of his day—akin to Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Hutton and Pablo Picasso—amongst his shut acquaintances and clientele. Now, the Maison continues that good affiliation with modern celebrities: actors Dew Jirawat and Yang Mi are counted among the many pals of the model, Wonyoung from the Ok-pop group IVE was named Fred’s Korea ambassador in September 2022, and now Jin from the boyband BTS and Chinese language actress Guan Xiaotong have been named the Maison’s international model ambassadors.
Recent from his navy discharge, all eyes had been on BTS vocalist Jin when he made his first official look for Fred as a torch bearer on the Paris Olympics, carrying virtually solely items from its signature Pressure 10 assortment and single-handedly bringing renewed focus to the jeweller’s iconic motif.
The maison’s strongest pillar, the Pressure 10 got here into being in 1966. Samuel seen his son Henri reworking a modest braid of crusing cables and a snap hook into a home made bracelet for his spouse, and Samuel recreated that idea with twisted metal threads and a gold clasp, paying homage to sturdy ropes and horseshoe-shaped bow shackles discovered on crusing boats. He named the bracelet in reference to the Beaufort wind pressure scale, an estimate of wind energy on a scale of 0 to 12, with pressure 10 denoting a storm.
Samuel may not have anticipated the transformative impression his genderless sports activities jewelry would convey. The distillation of his love of the solar, the ocean, crusing, and the balmy power of his native Buenos Aires and the French Riviera, Pressure 10 took a rugged, quotidian inspiration and made it a valuable expression of audacity and optimism, whereas retaining a relaxed air. Within the years since, the Pressure 10 assortment has grown to embody bracelets, earrings, necklaces, rings, and even eyewear, with buckle motifs in various dimensions, crafted from completely different metals, set with a dizzying array of gem stones, and paired with woven cable cords in colors that span all the seen spectrum.
And extra lately, Pressure 10 has diversified into extra specialised ranges. In 2021, Fred launched the Pressure 10 Winch line of rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets meant for males, devoted to exhibiting the fantastic thing about the braided cable, resembling rope wound round a winch on a sailboat, like thread on a spool. The next 12 months, a high-jewellery interpretation of Pressure 10 appeared within the Monsieur Fred Interior Gentle assortment because the Pressure 10 Successful Spirit bangle, with an outsized buckle minimize from a single aquamarine, laid atop diamonds.
Launched in 2023, the Roland Garros capsule version of Pressure 10 options brilliant orange within the woven cables and a mandarin garnet on the buckle, an homage to the clay tennis courts of the French Open, whereas the Blissful Blue Shades version launched final summer season reimagined the 4 foremost collections of the maison—Pressure 10, Probability Infinie, Ache de Sucre, Fairly Lady—with blue gem stones of accelerating depth, from aquamarines to blue topaz to sapphires. And now, the newest iterations of Pressure 10 contains mid-jewellery double-strand necklaces in yellow gold or white gold and set with brilliant-cut white diamonds, along with giant mannequin bracelets and single earrings with the identical interpretation—a scintillating suite befitting the maison famend because the Sunshine Jeweller.
Images: Jaya Khidir
Artwork Route: Marisa Xin
Images Assistants: Ng Ming and Syed Abdullah
This story first appeared within the September problem of GRAZIA Singapore.
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