Chanel Pearl Jewelry

More than 800 Chanel pieces set with faux pearls are gathered here: necklaces, earrings, brooches and bracelets, from the longest layered sautoir to the smallest CC stud. Gabrielle Chanel made the fake pearl fashionable in the 1920s, piling on ropes of it over her own daywear at a time when wearing costume jewellery on purpose was itself a statement.

The CC clasp, the interlaced gilt chain and the irregular, baroque shaped pearl became house signatures through the Gripoix workshop, which cast glass paste pearls coated in mother of pearl for Chanel from the 1920s onward. Robert Goossens joined the house in 1953 and pushed the jewellery toward a more Byzantine, antiquity inspired look for the postwar collections.

The recurring pieces

A handful of formats dominate the resale market. CC stud earrings set with a single pearl are the most common, followed by choker length necklaces and long multi strand sautoirs meant to be layered. Pearl brooches, often shaped as a bow or camellia, and multi row bracelets round out the picture. Pieces from a Métiers d'Art collection are rarer and sell well above everyday production.

Faux pearl versus fine pearl

Everything in this catalogue is costume jewellery: a glass or resin pearl, usually finished with a thin pearlescent coating, set on gold or silver toned metal. Fine Chanel pearl pieces, when they exist, come from the high jewellery side of the house rather than this range. The Coco Crush line, for comparison, is diamond set gold fine jewellery with no pearl at all, a different category that rarely overlaps with these pieces on the resale market.

Dating and authenticating a Chanel pearl piece

Most pieces carry a plaque stamped with the double C inside an oval cartouche, flanked by a season letter (A for Autumn, P for Spring, C for Cruise) and two digits for the year, plus a Made in France or Made in Italy mark. The cartouche was round before the mid 1980s and oval afterward. On inspection, check that the pearl's coating has not flaked or yellowed, and that the gold tone plating has not worn thin at the clasp, the most common wear point on these pieces.

Price and selling on JoliCloset

On the pre-owned market, a pair of pearl earrings typically trades from €350 to €700, and a necklace or sautoir from €800 to €3,000, depending on rarity and condition. Every piece listed on JoliCloset is checked by our experts before it goes live. Have a Chanel pearl piece to sell? List it in a few clicks and our team will evaluate and authenticate it before publication.