An expression of precious engineering, LE GRAMME's latest collection - cable bracelets - is directly inspired by the world of architecture and the construction of cable-stayed bridges.

San Francisco, Yokohama, Normandy, Sydney, Suez... they raise their monumental structures on each continent. Recognizable by their stays, these cables turned together starting from gigantic pylons to support their deck, they seem to defy the laws of gravity with naturalness. It is certainly this rigor applied to each element - fixing the pylons, balancing the stays, calculating the spans, manufacturing the segments of the decks, tensioning the anchors - which gives them this form of almost musical majesty that we find on the instruments at ropes. There are also two types of attachment for the stays: fan-shaped or harp-shaped.

Since the first two cable-stayed bridges built almost simultaneously in France and Sweden in the 1950s (Donzère-Mondragon/Auvergne-France, Strômsund-Sweden), nearly 150 cable-stayed bridges have been built around the world. Each new building giving rise to a new record, each time taking up a new technological challenge, combining know-how. The Rousski Bridge in Vladivostok is currently the longest in the world with its deck of 1104 meters (compared to the 1088 of Sutong in China and the 856 of the Normandy Bridge) and its stay cables of 584 meters, it is capable of withstanding the attacks of the cold like the sea, resistant to Siberian storms. Millau in France also holds a record with its 343 meter pylons raising its deck to 270 meters above the ground.

Alliance of lightness and solidity, they inspired LE GRAMME which combines the evocation of resistance of the cable with the precious nature of silver and gold, drawing its own version of an indestructible link in an approach to aesthetics decidedly masculine.
For these new worn objects, LE GRAMME re-interprets the shroud, transforms 925 Silver and 750 Gold, stretching them into silver or gold wires, assembled into strands of several units to vary the diameter of each cable. The bases of the stays transform into a clasp at the invisible junction. Functional in essence, the clasp becomes almost a jewel, its diameter varying depending on the cable, it can be exposed or worn under the wrist. Its tubular structure is reminiscent of another architectural reference dear to LE GRAMME, the Center Pompidou, designed in line with the architectural utopias of the 1960s by Archigram and Superstudio.

Photographer: Victoire Le Tarnec

Illustration: ©annaxhaard