PARIS — You can’t reinvent the wheel, but Boucheron has reinvented the box.
The Kering-owned jewelry house has unveiled a redesign of its signature cases, debuting new shapes and paring down the materials to just two under its new sustainability standards.
Gone is the traditional square that flips open at the top. Now seven styles of boxes are available to store the precious gems, in round and elongated oval shapes.
It’s part of the house’s larger plan to reexamine its environmental impact under its “Precious for the Future” plan laid out in 2022.
The boxes are composed of just aluminum and wool felt that meets the Responsible Wool Standard, and does away with hinges. The felt has no glue or stitching so it can more easily be recycled.
Both materials were selected for their lower environmental footprint, are recyclable and were selected with circularity in mind. Aluminum in particular was selected for its light weight and the boxes are one-fourth the weight of the previous iteration.
The house looked to beauty kits of the 1980s for inspiration and added design elements such as a unique emerald-cut motif meant to recall the aerial view of Paris’ Place Vendôme, where the jeweler’s flagship sits, to make “a sustainable object of desire.” Boucheron hopes the boxes themselves can be seen as objects of art, with their unusual design.
Using just two materials makes the boxes recyclable and doing away with hinges “reinvents the concept of the jewelry case,” the company said. The previous iteration of the cases used 11 materials and was not recyclable.
The company acknowledges that the traditional marriage proposal gesture of dropping to the knee and flipping open a box will change, as the new packaging lifts from the top.
Packaging has also been redesigned, replaced with an emerald green pouch made of 65 percent certified recycled cotton.
The “Precious for the Future” strategy reexamines the house’s supply chain, environmental impact and increases inclusion. By 2025, the company aims for full traceability of its raw materials and to reduce the environmental impact of its activities by 40 percent.