Goossens: Joaillier

Metals and stone, cultured pearls and precious wood-the savvy and sophisticated association of dissimilar materials is the signature element of Goossens, a discreet jeweler founded in 1950 by Robert Goossens, an artisan who apprenticed in metalwork with his father before learning the art of jewelry in all its forms in the workshops of the great Parisian silversmiths and jewelers. Meeting him for the first time in the 1950s, Coco Chanel was so captivated by his reinterpretations of jewelry from ancient Greece and Rome, Byzantium and Egypt that she made him one of her regular suppliers, commissioning a large part of her costume jewelry from him right up until her death in 1971. Balenciaga, Grès, Rochas, Yves Saint Laurent, Guerlain, and other top fashion designers soon followed suit. Today Robert’s son Patrick and daughter Martine perpetuate the family tradition with a line of distinctive jewelry and decorative objects. Goossens is renowned for working with rock crystal but amethysts, tourmaline, citrine, peridot and coral are used for certain designs in their masterpiece collection of earrings, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, pendants and rings, on view in their showroom on the Avenue George V. Along with Lesage, Lemarié and other haute couture artisans whose future was endangered, Goossens was bought by Chanel in 2005.

42 ave George V, Paris 8th, 01.47.23.99.26

Originally published in the December 2009 issue of France Today.