It is exceedingly rare to enter a world as commandingly exquisite as that of heritage French jewelry brand Boucheron. Akin to entering the brand’s new boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills—despite its being flanked by the world’s leading Maisons in either direction—something is just different. The difference is fetchingly foremost in the exceptional designs, wherein every release seems to defy technical standards, seems to conjure the sensuous and sublime. 

But what’s particularly striking today, as the brand prepares to toast its West Coast expansion with a private dinner at the John Lautner-designed Harvey House in the Hollywood Hills—which will see the attendance of Boucheron-bearing stars Laura Dern, Julianne Moore, Natasha Lyonne, Tracee Ellis-Ross, Cooper Koch, and newly announced brand ambassador Charlotte Lebon, among others—is the dynamic between its two leaders, CEO Hélène Poulit-Duquesne and Creative Director Claire Choisne. In a conversation in the rear of the boutique, the two’s vision for the brand melds together in a sort of blurring, seamlessly playful dance, where it’s not totally clear where creativity and commerce separate or forge. 

Following a career commenced at LVMH and then Cartier, Poulit-Duquesne became Boucheron CEO in 2015. Since that time, she has expanded the brand’s  product range and international footprint, having opened three boutiques in the US since the brand’s launch in September 2024. Her counterpart Choisne arrived at Boucheron a few years prior in 2011, after designing under her own name and heading the studio of Boucheron neighbor in Paris’ Place Vendome, Lorenz Baümer. A graduate of Haute École de Joaillerie in Paris—the oldest jewelry school in the world—Choisne won the Jacques Lenfant prize while there, awarded to the three top students in France. 

Today, before this evening’s festivities which will crescendo with a mind blowing performance by music legend Nile Rogers, the duo share on expansion into Los Angeles, the tension between creativity and commerce, the unique process for bringing to life the brand’s marvelous boutiques, and what lies ahead for one of Place Vendome’s oldest tenants.

FLAUNT: First and most important: why are you here in Los Angeles?‍

‍Claire Choisne: Because I love it! I spent 45 days this summer here in Los Angeles, and I love the vibe. It's like, here all the problems are far, far away. You can enjoy your time. The weather is perfect. The people are so nice, always smiling.

‍Hélène, what's the most exciting thing about the Boucheron expansion here in Los Angeles?

Hélène Poulit-Duquesne: When I joined, the decision on where to focus expansion was challenging, and I chose to invest in Asia, because I knew that the return would be quicker than in the US, which is a difficult market, especially for European brands. It takes time. We know that we have to invest here for a long time. It's a huge country where every city is kind of like a different country. We opened our first boutique in New York in September of last year. Then we came to Las Vegas. The West Coast is crucial for any jewelry brand that wants to succeed in the US—that’s the reason why we’re here. I think that we have a different type of clientele compared to the East Coast. I must say, I’m not yet familiar with LA. I don’t come here very often, but now I'm going to come a lot more.

Regionally, what do you think makes Americans slower to adopt European brands? Is it loyalty to some of the heritage houses here? 

Hélène Poulit-Duquesne: I think that it's probably because in the US, you have very strong brands that are local and that are doing extremely well. And especially in jewelry, you have Tiffany, which is one of the best in the world. You have also David Yurman, for example, which is a local brand that is doing extremely well, appealing to Americans with a different style. 

Still, anything from Paris is something exciting. So yes, we knew before coming that we had an appeal to Americans. The key clue is the fact that we have big American collectors of Boucheron pieces. The company was created in 1858 and some of the most interesting pieces from the history of Boucheron were made during the time of Frédéric Boucheron, the founder, at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century. And you have, at a worldwide level, a bunch of collectors that are collecting these pieces, which are extremely rare and extremely difficult to find. We knew that we have one collector from Japan, and the rest of the big collectors of Frederic Boucheron pieces are American. We know that if you have very knowledgeable people collecting Boucheron pieces—Americans are very knowledgeable of High Jewelry. They know that Boucheron is a very high-end and valuable brand, and it demonstrates that affinity between the Maison and the US.

Claire, you're obviously excited and moved by L.A. How does the city influence your design and vision for the brand creatively?

Choisne: I will have the answer in a few years, because it takes a long time. I love to do inspirational trips to nourish my creativity—then I just let it sit, and later something always comes out of it. I visited the West Coast, the Highway 1, and the parks. I visited all of LA and I loved it. I took millions of pictures. ‍

Matthew: Yeah, how about your feelings about the city's architecture? 

Choisne: I love the architecture. Definitely. It's not like Paris—no architectural homogeneity—but it's also full of surprises. 

And Hélène, how do you feel the city influences your business sensibilities? What do you think you have to learn as a CEO from California or L.A.?

Poulit-Duquesne: I think that what I find when we meet Californian clients, they're very creative. There’s an energy in the city that you can really feel, which is the top of creativity, of tech—‍

Choisne: It’s alive. ‍

Poulit-Duquesne: Voila, it's very positive, very lively. And I think that it resonates both with our very innovative positioning and very optimistic positioning. It's best, but optimism, there's something also about the light in LA, which, for me, is the best‍

Choisne: Must be the light, the tone, or the color of the light.‍

Hélène Poulit-Duquesne: The color of the light is very different. But as far as business, there's a kind of positive mindset which is very aligned with Boucheron's way of doing things. In terms of creativity, I think that what’s so interesting is how obsessed Americans—and particularly people from LA—are with contemporary art. We just visited the Getty this morning, and it was incredible. I think there's something about the work of Claire at Boucheron, which is very close to contemporary art in a way that should fit with Los Angeles clients. 

How about the conception of the boutique? What were the challenges in bringing this to life that you didn't foresee?

Poulit-Duquesne: We had only one challenge. We discovered a mistake in the initial design: the building was not seismically sound, so we had to rework the architecture to ensure it met the required standards. This kind of discovery is quite common in project development — there are often unforeseen issues along the way, and we must be prepared to find quick and effective solutions to address them. 

Then, if we’re talking about the boutique’s design, first I must say that...we have a very specific way of working at Boucheron on store design. I designed with two architects at the beginning, eight years ago. It was a frame, a concept, and they just gave it to me. We discussed and they just created, like, 4D theoretical shades and concepts, and we took that as a frame, and we adapted it to all the boutiques that we've been designing in the world. So we do all of it internally in Paris, except for Place Vendome, which is a flagship. But all the boutiques that we design, we're doing it internally, which makes me very proud, because in most cases, you take an external architect—we do it all by ourselves and we have a lot of fun. We select every furniture material, every fabric, and then it comes to life. 

I love doing interior design, and we always try to be relevant to the local culture. In the way we design, we had some link between Los Angeles and Paris. We export our French touch, but we always try to integrate local culture in what we're designing. For example, I don't know if you saw the facade style. It's very LA style, because it's so ceramic. It’s been done piece by piece. It's really a huge design. We have lots of art deco style codes that we integrated in. For every boutique we bring Boucheron's Parisian heritage with local touch, here Hollywood’s energy.

For example, by the end of the year, we're opening our big flagship in Shanghai, and we mixed really cultural Chinese elements with the French frame of a Boucheron house. It's a new boutique each time, and you never get bored. What I want is that our clients never get bored, because when we have more than 90 boutiques you can visit every one of them, you’ll have a different feeling, a different VIP. So you always discover things that are new.

What do you think differentiates Boucheron from competitors? Why is it special?

Choisne:  We don't think and don't do things like the other jewelers. Because it's more fun. And especially, our Carte Blanche HJ collections. We launch every July. I think what is different from my point of view is now Hélène has given me the freedom to create. It's really precious for me, and I can imagine almost whatever I want. I can use the material that I feel would be the best. I can invent new techniques with our craftsmen. So it’s wide open, a blank canvas, and you have the freedom to do something different. I don't want to copy what has already been made. It’s the freedom to create that makes the collections.‍

Poulit-Duquesne: It's a lot more innovative. I think that we share the same vision of what we want to do at Boucheron, and we really are here—not only to respect the past, because we really respect craftsmanship, the past, etcetera—but we want Boucheron to progress, to push boundaries, and also to shake the market a little bit. We are lighting the way in the sense that we are doing things that nobody is doing, and all the competition is looking at what we are doing, because they truly all see that we are more innovative, that we are going far.

Choisne: We follow our dreams. We don’t look back.

What other kind of research went into the Los Angeles expansion?

Poulit-Duquesne: On the business side, we looked at the figures of the other brands at Kering level. For the rest, it's more about intuition and motivation. We're both very intuitive. We're very analytical when it comes to real estate, retail, where we have to position ourselves, and the rest is about fun.

Matthew: And how about you two's relationship? It’s been 10 years since you’ve worked together—how would you describe your collaboration? It sounds like Claire is given a lot of freedom.

Choisne: I’ve been a designer for quite a long time now, and I’ve spoken about the freedom to create—you can't do anything without that. I think that, with Hélène, we have brains that are quite similar—the way we think, the way we see things are quite similar. So it's easy. 

Hélène Poulit-Duquesne: In terms of personality, because we're quite simple, and we are very friendly, which makes working together easy. I think that we both have a vision, a kind of humility, because we believe that we're here at Boucheron for a short period of time, and that we have to do the most of it in our time when we are here, because we are at the service of the brand. I always say that I would have loved to be an artist, but I'm on the business side. And Claire is the most organized and creative person that I've met in my life. I’ve worked with other creatives and they can go all over the place. She's very stubborn like me. She sticks to her vision, and that makes us work well together, because we have both brains: creative and strategic. 

In fact, you have both brains because she's also on the business side. She's spending a lot of time with the commercial people. For example, you try to get information from what's happening in terms of boutiques. Of course she sees things in a different way than I do, which makes it very complementary. I think it's very rare for two people to have both brains. That is the reason why it works.

Matthew: What about the current market perception of the brand, and how might you like to see that change? Is it awareness?

Hélène Poulit-Duquesne: Yes, awareness. In the US, we start from scratch. When you ask American people to cite jewelry brands, we don’t come to the top of mind. But when we ask them if they know Boucheron, most of them do, which is encouraging.And it's going to be the main challenge, and as I was explaining, each city is a different kind of market, and so we have to enter the different communities. And it's a kind of work of influence on a very local basis–that's the reason why it takes time. 

Are there reservations about using or working with Hollywood to kind of expand the brand mission? 

Hélène Poulit-Duquesne: No, we would love to. We would love to do it. Before entering on with the retail network, we did a lot of celebrity dressing on the red carpet. We’ve always had deep connections to Hollywood’s Golden Age actors—Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth, Marlène Dietrich—all of whom bought Boucheron’s creations. As part of the Kering Group, we support the Women in Motion initiative: every year in Cannes, we participate in the Women in Motion gala dinner with our ambassadors, who share our values of empowering women. We are doing a lot in the US. And we have a historical relationship in the US with old families, like the Mackays, the Vanderbilt, and the Astors.

Are there any favorite Hollywood films that either have compelling jewelry moments—or even if, aside from jewelry, just tend to continue inspiring you or making you laugh or reconsider love, all of the things the films do?

Claire Choisne: One of my favorites is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There’s no jewelry at all, I think, but I love the poetry.‍

Why do you love it? Because of sort of how it plays with memory?

Claire Choisne: Yes. Yeah, it's romantic, poetic, and different. I was moved by that one.

Hélène?

Hélène Poulit-Duquesne: I thought about Titanic, it’s a movie that I love. There's a nice story, because you were asking if there's something related to jewelry, but in fact, the Astor family, (who were Boucheron’s clients) was on the boat. When the boat sank, John, in fact, from the Astor family, had just got married. She was like, 16. It was a second marriage. He was very rich, and he died, but she survived. Apparently part of all the jewels that she was bringing, because it was a honeymoon trip, drowned into the ocean, but she survived with a big 10-carat sapphire. So there's a story about that jewelry, about the Astors. They were one of our most important American clients. So when I saw the movie, I remembered the Astors. The Horse Whisperer, because I love Robert Redford and because I'm a big horse lover. It's my passion in life. I love that movie because of that, and it's so typical American.

And a nice nod to Robert Redford, who recently passed away. What are we looking forward to? What do we see in the future that's exciting or compelling? 

Poulit-Duquesne: After LA, first we're gonna inaugurate Thailand, where we opened our first ever boutique this past June, in Bangkok. We are going to open the doors of a new flagship in Shanghai, which is a big house in an old building. It's going to be incredible. And then we’ll go to Miami. It's going to be great. We have plenty of exciting projects. We have exciting new collections coming in.

Poulit-Duquesne: It's gonna be cool. Between retail and new collections, there’s always something new and fun.

Tonight’s event is being staged at a John Lautner property. Why? Why are we doing this there?

Hélène Poulit-Duquesne: We wanted to draw a parallel between the Hollywood story and the Frédéric Boucheron story at the first point, and we wanted to do it in family spirit, that is why we chose a real house. We loved the architecture of this house designed by John Lautner, who was a disciple of the illustrious architect Frank Lloyd Wright. We wanted to have the perfect view of LA, so that's why we have this really Californian house and the pure view of LA. And you will see that inside the house, you have plenty of storytelling about who we are, a cross of LA and Boucheron.