Style Edit: French jewellery brand Messika brings neo-1980s sensuality and punk rock attitude to its Midnight Sun 2 collection
- The avant-garde White Midnight Sun collar necklace features over 2,400 stones surrounding a pear-shaped diamond nestled in a yellow gold bezel
There’s a certain kind of woman (here’s looking at you, Kate Moss) who can maintain an effortlessly glamorous look through the evening’s revelries until the wee hours, even as the sun begins to peek over the horizon and night gradually gives way to dawn.
Inspired by such figures, Messika – the renowned French jewellery brand celebrated for empowering confident, free-spirited women – has unveiled Midnight Sun 2, the second instalment of its Midnight Sun haute jewellery collection.
While the first collection took inspiration from the electrifying parties of the wild 1970s, this daring sequel seeks to capture the final moments of the night, as the last light of the stars meets the pure white of dawn.
“I have magical memories of parties until the end of the night, when we’d leave the dance floor to find the first rays of the sun,” says Valérie Messika, founder and artistic director of the brand.
That enigmatic duality between night and day inspired Messika to embrace the artistic principle of chiaroscuro, an Italian term referring to the interplay of light and shade in a work of art, creating a sense of opposition between two natural forces.
Natural elements also shine through in the collection’s bold use of sparkling diamond bubbles, meticulously crafted into eye-catching, rounded forms that evoke an untouched snowbank as pure as the first light of day.
This effect is evident in White Midnight Sun, a breathtakingly avant-garde jewellery set delivering a distinctly neo-1980s sensuality. The semi-rigid collar necklace is densely encrusted with over 2,400 stones. At the centre of the collar, a 3.55-carat pear-shaped diamond nestles in a yellow gold bezel, subtly nodding to the collection’s solar motif. With the punk rock attitude of the 1980s in mind, a sculptural diamond-studded ear cuff feels playful yet provocative, complemented by a ring featuring the same rounded, diamond-studded design.