Whether sitting for Man Ray in 1935 or holding court in her suite at the Ritz in Paris in 1962, Coco Chanel was rarely photographed without her signature string of costume pearls. “A woman needs ropes and ropes of pearls,” she once said, in a sentiment that current Matthieu Blazy seems to have taken to heart since being appointed creative director of the house Coco built in 2025. I could dedicate an entire story to the Belgian designer’s interpretations of the matriarch’s most beloved jewel: pearls exploding like fireworks from the décolletage, cascading in drop earrings, imagined as demure studs and even festooning sheer pumps. But Chanel hardly had a monopoly on these oceanic treasures this season. It’s only fair to cast our net a little wider.

With that in mind, read below for how to wear pearls now, as decreed by the spring/summer 2027 runways.

Button up

Ever since Chanel acquired Charvet – France’s oldest (and fashion’s most IYKYK) shirtmaker – in July, all eyes have been on Matthieu Blazy’s take on the wardrobe staple. And what with prestigious button maker Maison Desrues also in the fold, the designer has turned even the smallest haberdashery details into decorative flourishes. Case in point: the mother-of-pearl buttons that adorned bib-front tuxedo shirts and cascaded from the hemlines of unstructured jackets.

Chanel spring/summer 2027.

Go big

Catwalk jewellery needs to be seen from the third row (!), so it’s unsurprising that brands scaled up their pearly whites this season. Think of the bulbous pearl drop earrings at Michael Rider’s third outing for Celine, which recoded the bourgeois Left Bank signature, or the piled-up strings of pearls, coloured gems and crystals at Valentino, which made real noise within the hush of Paris’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève.

Celine spring/summer 2027.

Valentino spring/summer 2027.

Where’s the beach?

Pearls can feel punk, prim or , depending on how you style them. At Dior, Jonathan Anderson’s pebble-like pearls had something of the beachcomber about them, strung along asymmetric chain earrings that echoed the lightness of a collection featuring chiffon tailoring so diaphanous it could fit inside a shoebox.

Dior spring/summer 2027.

Grey matters

From Lucy Delius’s Nyx to Melanie Georgacopoulos’s Eclipse, recent fine jewellery collections have incorporated rare peacock and black baroque freshwater pearls. Dolce & Gabbana also spun the colour wheel for spring/summer 2027, adding necklaces strung with luminous grey pearls to a mix of coin-emblazoned cocktail rings, XL crucifix pendants and stacks of bohemian bangles.

Dolce & Gabbana spring/summer 2027.

Kitsch sitch

OK, you caught me: I’ve snuck in another Chanel reference. But just look at that necklace of tiny mother-of-pearl clouds! Kitsch jewellery chimed with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink eclecticism of the spring/summer 2027 shows – see also: Chopova Lowena and Dries Van Noten – so allow us to direct your attention to Acne Studios’s earrings, shaped like tiny sausage dogs with pearly bodies. Given that Coco Chanel owned dachshunds herself, I have a feeling she would approve.

Acne Studios spring/summer 2027.

Chanel spring/summer 2027.