Jeweller to the stars Chopard is in the business of making you look and feel good. Co-president of Chopard Caroline Scheufele speaks to us on sustainable jewellery and Cannes
Jeweller to the stars Chopard is in the business of making you look and feel good. Co-president of Chopard Caroline Scheufele speaks to us on sustainable jewellery and Cannes
Chopard has been a partner of Cannes Film Festival and dressing its celebrities for 20 years now. How does Chopard ensure its Red Carpet Collection remains fresh?
It’s an ongoing, never-ending process. As we speak we are already preparing our Red Carpet 2017 collection. The collection has a very free spirit because the inspiration comes from all the actresses from around the world and they’re all different: Different nationalities, ages, shades of hair, skin colour, culture... So obviously they don’t have the same taste I do and the collection has to be very versatile. It’s like a rainbow; this is what’s nice about it.
For the collection, you’ve also partnered up with Gemfields, a leading supplier of responsibly sourced coloured gemstones. Tell us more about this.
Gemfields is a really large organisation, not only for emeralds but also rubies, amethyst, tanzanite; and we’re now looking into other options for 2017. They have done a great job in making the public aware that mining can be different because it’s a whole educational process. There’re lots of little boxes that have to be ticked off and achieved in order to be certified Fairmined [or responsibly sourced]: Not spoiling the planet, no kids in the mines, secure salary for the miners… Luxury can be clean and it should be; the word luxury should stand for that, whether it’s in the fashion industry, our industry, the car industry, etc.
Three years ago, you mentioned that you’d like to introduce Fairmined gold into your main collections. How is that going?
Well, we have introduced the Palme Verte, which is the Fairmined plain gold collection and, as we speak, we are preparing the Ice Cube collection for the boutiques. My vision, of course, is to use Fairmined gold for all our high jewellery. For the Red Carpet Collection, we are 70 percent there.
To bring you back to Cannes, any celebrity anecdotes to share?
After 20 years of Cannes, I have a few, of course! There’s one about the late Elizabeth Taylor. We had dressed her for the red carpet and at 1am, we got a call from the bodyguard. He says: “I don’t know what to do; Mrs Taylor wants to sleep with her jewellery!” She was staying in a private villa and she took off her Armani dress but she kept the jewellery on. She’s known to sleep with diamonds so I said to let her sleep with them, it doesn’t matter. We’d pick it up in the morning because she had three guards with her. The next morning, we got another phone call. “Mrs Taylor doesn’t want to give back the necklace. She would like to know what is the best price for her.” So she bought it. She also asked if she could take a look at the rest of the jewellery, so I went to the house and showed her the collection. But first, she showed me her collection and it was all on the coffee table. There were like, I don’t know, 200 pieces between us. And there was her little dog walking over the pieces. I thought: Oh my god, I hope it doesn’t like emeralds!
Lastly, how should jewellery make women feel?
Happy. Beautiful and happy.
