For the timeless and the effortless
In the Cab With
Charlotte Chesnais
A Conversation on
Singularity,
Creating with Intuition, and Paradoxes
February 28 2026, by Bart Kooi
Since launching her eponymous brand in 2015, her work has been defined by a constant balance of paradoxes: fluidity and structure, simplicity and complexity, and timelessness and modernity. Using her pieces as a quiet megaphone, her jewelry communicates in a language of understated elegance while leaving a strong impression through bold, organic forms. It’s the same instinctive approach that has guided collaborations with Christofle, A.P.C., Rabanne, Khaite, and Loro Piana, reflecting Chesnais’s enduring influence on contemporary design.
In this week’s In the Cab With: Charlotte Chesnais, she reflects: “It’s about having something to say and translating it into jewelry.”
In a previous interview, you mentioned that as a child you painted your bedroom completely black. What does that say about you as a child?
My parents were renovating the house, and I remember being able to choose the colors for my bedroom. I decided on dark blue walls and a black floor. It wasn’t about darkness or rebellion; from very early on, I was very involved in making decisions about anything related to aesthetics.
So you had an early sense of aesthetic sensitivity, yet you initially went on to study at a business school. How did that choice come about?
I originally wanted to be a doctor. It felt natural—everyone in my family was connected to the medical field. So I thought, “Of course, I’ll be a doctor,” and no one really questioned it. Then, when I was sixteen, my mother asked me, “Are you sure this is the right path for you?” Suddenly, that question made me stop. After years of certainty, it only took one question for me to realize that maybe I didn’t want it after all.
I enrolled in prépas [two years of study which act as an intensive preparatory course for enrollment in a grande école] and thought I wanted to work in luxury marketing or merchandising. But after a few months, I realized I wanted to be closer to the product. I visited Studio Berçot, and I immediately knew this was going to be my school.
What made you realize that immediately?
I met the headmaster, Marie Rucki, and she was such a character. She would smoke cigarette after cigarette, with the ash hanging from them and falling everywhere. She saw something in me and said, “You’re going to have fun.”
Studio Berçot was a very free-spirited school, more than any other fashion school. It wasn’t academic—you learned the basics of art, fashion, and other creative fields. What I learned most there was [an understanding of] my taste.
Berçot opened my eyes to Japanese designers, to Comme des Garçons, Margiela, Helmut Lang, Prada. I had no idea those brands even existed. I entered Studio Berçot loving everything about fashion and left with a much more precise sense of my own taste.
It was also through Marie Rucki that you got your first job at Balenciaga?
Yes. Berçot was like a network. The studio manager at Balenciaga was looking for an assistant, and he called Marie Rucki. She sent me in with a few other students who were the coolest people in my class. Balenciaga was the brand of the moment; I remember being so sure that I would never get the job—yet I did.
You began working at Balenciaga at just nineteen. How did the nearly ten years you spent under Nicolas Ghesquière influence the way you approach research and design today?
Balenciaga was basically my school. Who I am today, how I work today, how I developed my brand—it’s the culmination of my nine years at Balenciaga.
What I learned most is that—whether you like his work or not—Nicolas’ work is very singular and very distinctive. This search for singularity is something that has always stayed with me.
When I launched my brand, so many girls at that time were launching their eponymous jewelry brands—one after the other. I didn’t want to be seen as one of them. I wanted to be very singular and very distinctive; otherwise there was no point in doing it.
Early on at Balenciaga, you focused on ready-to-wear before transitioning to jewelry. How did that shift happen?
After about a year, I remember that I wasn’t really happy with what I was doing as I was assisting someone I didn’t really like. I had the courage—especially for my age—to say that I didn’t want to work such long hours for someone I didn’t respect that much.
The easiest option would have been to fire me, but instead Nicolas decided to change the team structure and took me on as his assistant. From that moment on, I worked closely with him—doing his research, organizing his mood boards, organizing his work, being with him all the time. After a while, I missed working directly on the product, so Nicolas gave me small side projects. That’s how jewelry came in.
At the same time, I was also in charge of the Édition line. Each season, we selected ten to fifteen pieces from Cristóbal Balenciaga’s archive and reproduced them as identical couture replicas. Creatively, the process wasn’t very rich because it was mainly about reproduction, but I learned so much from spending all that time in the Balenciaga archive. I know the archive by heart.
When you were asked to design jewelry on top of your other responsibilities, were you immediately excited?
I was very happy. I was so curious. With Nicolas, one season could be about latex and the next could be all about tweed. Every season felt like a new project that had to start from scratch, and jewelry felt the same. I didn’t realize at first that I was entering an entirely new category.
I’ve said this often, but I truly felt that in jewelry I had found my mother tongue. Working on clothes in the studio with Nicolas at the time was very stressful. With jewelry, it was so different—it all flowed very naturally. After the first season I worked on jewelry, Nicolas decided that I would become the jewelry designer at Balenciaga.
Photography: Steven Meisel. Styling: Marie-Amélie Sauvé. Make-up: Pat McGrath. Hair: Guido Palau. Art Direction: M/M Paris.
Today, when I have boundaries—when I design for other brands, for example—it actually helps me. But at Balenciaga I had never experienced creative boundaries before, so I wasn’t missing anything. It was really about exploring new materials and techniques every season.
At the beginning of each season, we would receive a briefing from Nicolas, and from there we were free to explore. I would make mock-ups, experiment with new materials, textures, and colors. Through this way of working, I eventually created the blown-glass jewelry. I was simply thinking: “I need to find something that Nicolas has never seen before and that he’s going to be excited about.”
So you really learned on the job. Did that way of learning shape your aesthetic as we know it today?
Absolutely. Even though working with jewelry felt like speaking my mother tongue, I didn’t know how to sketch what I had in mind. I didn’t have academic training; I couldn’t do 3D sketches. I was quite limited.
Because I didn’t know how to properly draw what I had in my head, I would simply try it out with my hands. That’s how I discovered these very organic shapes, and eventually the DNA of my brand today.
Beyond their organic forms, your pieces often sit at the intersection of object and adornment. Why is it important for your jewelry to function as objects in their own right?
That also came to me very naturally. At Balenciaga I was designing so many pieces that I would just leave them around my house. I had so many pieces in my flat—I’d place them next to my flowers, books, and glasses. Without realizing it, they became part of my interior. When I hosted dinners, instead of putting flowers on the table, I would arrange these colored pieces next to the plates, glasses, and silverware. Gradually, I realized that these pieces were also interior objects; I treated them exactly the same way.
It’s interesting that so many elements of your brand developed unconsciously or intuitively. A central theme in your work is the coexistence of paradoxes and contrasts. If you were to think about it consciously, why is that so important to you?
I never really thought about it before. Everything I’ve talked about happened intuitively. The first five years of the brand were based entirely on instinct, without analyzing how or why I was doing things. The brand carried my name, and everything felt very natural to me.
As the brand matured, I realized I needed to articulate its story and create a brand book—things that larger retailers ask for. Only then did I fully understand my [design] principles and these paradoxes, which actually made my work easier. But none of it was planned from the beginning.
When people ask me to describe myself, it’s true that I’m full of things that seem completely opposite, yet somehow create balance. For example, I hate questions like “What’s your style?” But when I force myself to answer, I realize it’s a mix of very masculine and very feminine elements.
So the brand is very much a reflection of who you are as a person?
Yes. It’s extremely personal.
As Charlotte Chesnais the person and Charlotte Chesnais the brand are so deeply intertwined, how do you navigate the line between the two?
It’s funny. As a brand, we’ve had a very intense year, with the launch of our fine jewelry collection and the opening of a new store in Tokyo. Recently, a close friend asked me, “How are you?” I kept answering by talking about the collection and the store. And my friend said, “I’m asking how you are, Charlotte. I’m talking to Charlotte, not Charlotte Chesnais.”
Lately, I’ve been wondering whether I should remove “Charlotte” from the brand name and simply call it Chesnais. Maybe it will never happen, but it’s something that I’ve been considering. When I work with other brands—like in my recent collaboration with Christofle or when I work for Khaite—I’m working as Charlotte Chesnais the designer, not Charlotte Chesnais the brand. I’m still figuring out how to balance the two.
Photography: Charlotte Stouvenot. Art Direction: Fabrice Paineau. Make-up: Caroline Joos. Hair: Joséphine Brignon. Courtesy of Charlotte Chesnais.
When I launched my brand, I remember asking Lucien Pagès—whom I was already very close to at the time—“What do you think the brand should be called?” And he said, “Charlotte Chesnais, of course. You are the embodiment of a cliché.” It was the cliché of a French girl living in Paris: effortless, not wearing makeup, never brushing her hair. And it’s true, I am a bit that girl, and that’s probably also why the brand has succeeded.
For the past ten years, the name Charlotte Chesnais has been the right name. But more and more men are now buying our jewelry. If you think about men’s jewelry—or fashion in general—almost none use a woman’s name.
Your inspirations range from sculpture and art to everyday objects, yet you’ve said you prefer to build your own references rather than borrow from the past. What does that mean in practice?
For me, it comes back to singularity and creating your own language.
I love jewelry from the ’20s or the ’40s, but I have no interest in designing something directly inspired by those periods. I have many books and I love looking through them, but I don’t treat them as direct references. So many things around me influence me without me even realizing it—it’s constant. I absorb everything I see, but I create instinctively. That’s what works for me. It’s about having something to say and translating it into jewelry.
With your fine jewelry collection that you just launched, the balance of paradoxes comes together, as well as the coexistence of diamond and metal. Do you see this collection as the culmination of your way of working?
There had been such demand for special pieces; I felt like the brand was finally mature enough to develop fine jewelry.
Personally too—after designing two collections a year for ten years—I had so many pieces of jewelry to choose from that it made me want to simplify what I wore. I started asking myself: if I could wear just one piece of jewelry, what would it be? If I were to press the fruit of the brand, what juice would come out? That question led directly to the fine jewelry collection.
And if you had to choose one final piece that represents it all?
That’s very difficult; it’s like choosing between my children. The combination I wear most often is the twin ring inside the round trip. [adds] And I have a bangle that I never take off: five twin bracelets—the piece I designed when I was pregnant with my twins•
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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