Contemporary French Jewellery

When he founded his jewellery house in January 2015 after an initial experience with Yves Saint-Laurent and over a decade at Lanvin, Elie Top wanted to give a more personal and sophisticated expression to his work. He defines his own space of freedom in the chivalrous words of Saint-John Perse:
“I have built myself with honor and dignity, and it promises well, the soil whereon I have established my law.”

It is with the greatest audacity and the highest of standards that he has succeeded in creating a never-before-seen aesthetic in the world of jewellery.

Permitting any form of inspiration within the setting of jewellery excellence in the service of style, the house of Elite Top embraces the freedom of taking the steeper path.

The unveiling of his first collection of jewellery, “Mécaniques Célestes”, in 2015 was met with surprise, leading a great American journalist famed for being uncompromising to say that “she had finally just seen something new!”.

This rare compliment showed Elie Top that he had succeeded in meeting the creative challenge that had been thrown down, taking his place in the market where expectations are huge because people believe that everything has been done before.

Elie Top’s creativity is the reflection of his abundant imagination, which draws upon poetry, music, history, and why not even geography. This is the crux of it all; the credo that founded the house of Elie Top. Always on the alert, this is his constant quest, the task at hand, the daily challenge.

It also lies in the technical creativity, in showing how to break boundaries with artfulness and ingenuity, to surprise, astonish and enchant!

Each collection by the house of Elie Top tells an epic tale of a world emerging from time immemorial, captured by its creator to be redesigned in a uniquely modern fashion.

Abstract geometries float through the cosmos of “Mécaniques Célestes”, or in the Bestiary of a primordial forest in “Magica Naturae”, each collection instates a unique style and makes it a signature.

Singularity is the reflection of Elie Top’s deep sincerity, expressing a highly personal and identifiable facet of his character through each of his creations.

Elie Top always designs with a meticulous obsession with detail, in a three-dimensional vision that is tangibly in service of the beauty of the jewellery.

He describes himself as a “manic-inventive” because perfectionism shines forth at every stage, from the creation to the production of his pieces of jewellery.

From the very first designs nothing is left to chance, as each stage requires time, precision and a rigor that leaves no room for artisanal interpretation.

From the virtuosic mechanism of “Mécaniques Célestes” to the assemblage of countless scales down to the millimeter for the Bestiary, each piece is a wonder of ingenuity, bearing forth a material that is sensual, a source of movement, or a secret mechanism.

Hybridization has always been in the nature of the creations of Elie Top, who has always loved to merge eras and styles, taking techniques from the past to combine them with the tools of today, or introducing mixtures of materials that are unprecedented in jewellery.

The codes of chivalry coexist gallantly with romantic floral motifs, the 1930s blend boldly with the baroque, gold sits alongside blackened silver and secret mechanisms from Enlightenment cabinetmakers find a new life in his jewels.

This hybridization of epochs, styles, materials and techniques is the hallmark of the surprising timelessness of Elie Top’s jewellery.

A lover of history and travelling through time, Elie Top has always kept the longevity of a piece of jewellery in mind.

Jewellery traverses centuries, transmitting milestone moments of a life and the aesthetic of an era. In this vein, the creator has always liked to turn a jewel from yesteryear into a jewel for today, whether this means simply taking the stones from the old piece of jewellery, or keeping an original motif to integrate it into a piece of jewellery with a new design.

The metamorphosis of an antique jewel allows us to breathe new life into the beauty of the past without draining our planet’s resources. It is both an aesthetic and virtuous approach, the upcycling of jewellery as seen by Elie Top.

For the signature collections, while the majority of the stones and gold still come from mines, these are RJC certified and guarantee the quality and traceability of all the precious materials used by the jewellery house.