- The count
- 120 runway photographs from 23 Paris houses, spring/summer 2027 shows, September 28 to October 6, 2026 · read October 29, 2026 · an estimate
- Smooth metal
- 41 of the 57 frames where the metal could be read, in our reading
- Worked metal
- 5 frames, at two houses: Schiaparelli and Balenciaga, in our reading
- Why choose texture
- It hides small scratches better than polish; it does not stop a finish from wearing
At Givenchy, NSS Magazine saw “enormous chrome spheres as earrings”, and in the photographs its puffy chrome hoops are bright as mirrors. In the same photographs, Hermès hung polished silver-tone toggles on leather cords and showed a large anchor chain, Dior threaded long, fine chains with white beads and drops, and Valentino set gold-colored flowers with crystals and colored stones.
One label for each of 120 photographs
The photographs are the detail and runway shots published on Vogue Runway for each show, up to six per house. For 17 houses they are the frames Vogue tagged as jewelry; the other six houses’ frames carry no tag, and nothing records how they were picked. Twenty-three of the 25 houses in the Taton Paris Jewelry Index have them. Each frame got one label for the piece that dominates it: smooth metal, worked metal (crumpled, hammered, creased or left rough), ornament cast in relief, metal cut into studs or facets, another material such as glass or beads, or no jewelry that could be read. The metal could be read in 57 frames. Besides the 41 smooth and 5 worked, nine showed relief on otherwise smooth metal, such as Zimmermann’s veined leaves and an earring framed like a painting at Acne Studios, and two showed the studded metal mesh of Junya Watanabe.
Where the metal was worked
Schiaparelli is where the metal itself was worked. Coveteur described a necklace “with multi-textured thorn-like pieces”, and four of the house’s six photographs show worked metal: that collar of spiky leaves, a wide cuff of rough, nugget-like bars, a cuff sculpted as an open rose and an earring with a crumpled, creased surface.
Balenciaga’s one example is a pendant of two crumpled, nugget-like shapes. Its other photographs show a polished teardrop hoop, a shell pendant in relief and bright spheres in three frames; in two of those, the spheres are too small to tell smooth from lightly dimpled, and they were counted smooth.
The index of October 13 counted Chanel in its texture row as well, as an estimate. Read closely, the rough parts at Chanel are the red or gray-blue centers of round earrings, which look like cast glass, in irregular rims, and a square of crumpled gold-colored foil under a clear top, in a thin frame. The rims and the frame are smooth, and the count files these frames under another material.
In Paris, the word hammered went to satin
In the Paris reviews that the index draws on, “hammered” and “molten” went to the clothes. Vogue’s Nicole Phelps picked Louis Vuitton’s “embellished hammered satin elongated tanks” among the best evening looks of the season, and AnOther’s review of Saint Laurent found “molten metallic cotton”. Jewelry did get the word in London, where Labrum’s huge hammered earrings “encased the entire ear”, as British Vogue put it.
A worked surface, light and scratches
Euro Inox, the European market development association for stainless steel, describes the mirror finish as one that “reflects a clear distinct image”, and its guide to finishes says patterned surfaces are “less likely to show the damage effects” where surfaces take knocks and scratches, at building entrances and in elevators. A 2019 study of textured plastic in the journal Wear measured how much a scratch shows, as a difference in lightness against the surface around it, and textures that keep that difference small hide it better. So a worked surface should hide a scratch better than polish does, but it does not prevent one, and on a plated piece the finish is still a thing that can wear.
This shop chooses worked surfaces for the light: a hammered or crushed face gives many small highlights where a polished one gives a single line. That is a taste.
How to wear it
- Set it against something smooth. In the photographs, Balenciaga’s crumpled pendant hangs from a plain, fine chain.
- Give texture the pieces that get knocked. Rings and bracelets meet tables and bags, and those are the pieces where a worked surface has the most to hide.
- Keep the usual care. Our care line reads “Keep dry — away from water, perfume and lotion”.
What the count does not show
One reader labeled the photographs, at sizes where a full-length look or a small close-up can hide a surface. At Dries Van Noten, Sacai and Ann Demeulemeester every frame was a full look; four close-ups of Sacai’s collars, outside the set, show bright faceted pieces, not worked metal. Saint Laurent and Rick Owens had no photographs in the set. A house with no worked metal here may still have shown some in a look that was not among its six.
If you want to try it
Our Hammered Heart Pendant has both surfaces on one piece: gold-tone brass crumpled into small facets on the front, smooth glossy enamel on the back. Among our hoops, the Two-Tone Crushed Hoops twist a gold-tone band and a silver-tone band of crumpled metal together.