Gabrielle Greiss reinterprets the secret lives of animals in jewelled form

When a fashion collection has good storytelling behind it, it’s usually a successful one,’ says fashion-turned-jewellery designer Gabrielle Greiss (whose allegorical debut jewellery collection we highlighted in 2024). ‘It’s not every season that you find a coherent story, because lots of times you have ideas you like, but you don’t really know what you want them to say. You need time. And then, sometimes, things just fall into place.’

It’s an evolution echoed in Munich-born, Normandy-based Greiss’ own path. After a career in fashion – which saw her working with Martine Sitbon, Sonia Rykiel and Alber Elbaz, followed by an eight-year tenure at Chloé – Greiss took a pause, considering a change in direction. ‘When I stopped working at Chloé, I wanted to take some time for myself,’ she says. ‘I was doing a lot of afternoon classes at Beaux-Arts de Paris, and sculpting was something that felt easier for me than painting or drawing. I started to do animals – although, I’m not an animal person. I do have a cat now, but I didn’t choose her. She just moved in, so you observe.’

In her sculpting work, Greiss was inspired by the figurative foundations of the fables of La Fontaine and Aesop. ‘I felt those fables are really just about simple behaviours that we all have, and they tell our most simple stories and interactions. They’re actually quite modern and relevant and timeless. Then everything started to make sense for me, and I realised that this becomes just like an illustration. And the fables were illustrated in so many different ways. So why not wear them? And it’s nice that you can know a story that you wear, or you can have it just for aesthetic reasons. So many things just came together.’

Greiss created sculptures in wax that were then cast in bronze in Paris. It formed the basis of Fables Etcetera, her debut jewellery collection, launched last March, which brought the spiritual world of the animals to life. In her second collection, Schatzkammer, this menagerie is intertwined with Greiss’ memories of childhood visits to Munich palace Residenz, where Bavarian royal treasures are on display. During these trips, she was struck by the abundance of precious stones, an opulence she draws on in her new work.

Still enamoured by the secret life of animals – ‘I wanted to move on to something new, but imagining the adventures of animals, giving them human motives and emotions, kept drawing me back,’ she says – Greiss reinterpreted them in bold stones, giving the timelessness of Aesopian fables a painterly spin. In these new works, monkeys bedecked in onyx and pink moonstones join leopards in jasper, while peacocks flex tails of lapis lazuli, pyrite and labradorite. Elsewhere, a black onyx and tiger’s eye bear keeps a watchful eye from a garden of sunstone and ametrine. ‘I didn’t want to work with really precious stones because I like when the jewellery still has a little bit of cool, and is a little bit punk,’ says Greiss. ‘Using stones was a new challenge; there are so many possibilities, and it can so easily get a bit precious or decorative, which I didn’t want.’

Oversized proportions lend a joyful tactility throughout. ‘It was quite a natural choice. First, I did some rough drawings that I put on myself, and visually it felt right. I wanted them as a statement and not as a hidden little charm. I think I was always attracted to bigger pieces – they are more my language.’

instagram.com/gabrielle.greiss

A version of this article appears in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.