Fashion

Meet Marie-Laure Cérède, Chanel’s New Jewelry Director

BYMille Team

June 12, 2026

One of the most influential figures in contemporary luxury jewelry and watch design is finally stepping into the spotlight. This week, Chanel announced the appointment of Marie-Laure Cérède as Director of its Jewelry Creation Studio, ending months of industry speculation following her departure from Cartier at the end of 2025. Beginning in October, the French creative will oversee both Chanel’s fine jewelry and high jewelry collections, succeeding Patrice Leguéreau, the visionary designer who led Chanel’s jewelry creation studio for 15 years until his death in 2024.

“I am honored and moved to join Chanel, a maison of singular cultural force and exceptional discipline that continues to question convention, redefine femininity and express modernity through form and spirit,” Cérède told WWD. “I am looking forward to meeting the teams and writing the new chapter together.”

Those who aren’t familiar with Cérède’s name have definitely seen her work. Unlike fashion creative directors, who increasingly operate as celebrities in their own right, jewelry’s most influential figures often remain behind the scenes. Yet for nearly a decade, Cérède helped shape Cartier’s modern identity, overseeing some of the maison’s most celebrated jewelry and watch creations between 2016 and 2025 and leaving her mark on countless pieces seen on red carpets, in campaigns, and inside display cases around the world.

Her career spans more than two decades. After beginning at Cartier in 2002, she spent 14 years at Harry Winston before returning to Cartier, where she eventually became Creative Director of Jewelry and Watchmaking. Throughout her career, she built a reputation for balancing heritage with innovation, creating pieces that felt contemporary without losing sight of the history that made them iconic in the first place.

The move marks a significant moment for Chanel, signaling the growing importance of jewelry within the Chanel universe, as the house continues to expand a category that analysts estimate generated close to $1 billion in sales last year. Meanwhile, the hire brings one of luxury’s most respected creative minds into the fold. While fashion has spent the past year fixated on creative director musical chairs, one of the most consequential appointments of 2026 may have happened far away from the runway, in the ateliers where the future of high jewelry is being imagined.

Meet Marie-Laure Cérède, Chanel’s New Jewelry Director

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Meet Marie-Laure Cérède, Chanel’s New Jewelry Director

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