Gaia Repossi, 29, is in the lounge of the Chiltern Firehouse, London, describing her decision to sell a minority share of Repossi, the fine jewellery business founded by her great-grandfather in 1920, to the luxury conglomerate LVMH. Speaking in a whisper, just audible over the plinky piano jazz of the hotel’s sound system and no match for the waitress who has grudgingly accepted her order for green tea and the hotel’s enigmatic snack of “carrot blunts”, she cuts a diminutive figure. Dressed in a wardrobe that rotates Cos, Céline, Louis Vuitton and Loewe, with razor-sharp cheekbones and a particularly European type of raw, hollow-eyed beauty, she’s an arresting if subtle presence. It’s a compelling package: she’s built a career on the quiet statement that reverberates loudly.

Born in Turin in 1986, and raised in Monaco, Italy and France, Repossi was only 21 when her father made her creative director of the family business. An archaeology graduate, she studied painting at the Beaux-Arts in Paris and was settled on a career as an artist. Her father lured her, she says, by offering her creative control. “It was the way to bring me in,” she says, “but he was always right next to me, and we are working hand in hand.”

Nine years later, Repossi has transformed the house once famed for its delicate yet rather old-fashioned couture pieces. From the outset, she determined to offer something radically different to the vast, glitzy jewellery houses that dwarf the small Repossi store on the Place Vend?me in Paris. Her jewels are modern, deceptively simple and design-led, all inspired by architecture, art, and “anthropological details”.