Red carpets and fawn pendants: Chopard at the Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival opened its 74th version earlier this week. The first fully-fledged movie competition to be held since the pandemic started, it not solely rings in the revival of cinema, but in addition the purple carpet — albeit, a smaller, sober and greener carpet. Leading the inexperienced cost is Chopard, the luxurious jeweller behind a few of the most iconic jewelry items on the French Riviera, in addition to the design of the Palme d’Or award.

“The story began in 1997,” says Caroline Scheufele, the creative director and co-president of Chopard, over e-mail. “During a meeting with Pierre Viot [then president of the Cannes Festival], he invited me to redesign it for the 50th anniversary.” Given her love for cinema, she accepted the “fantastic challenge” and, as she not too long ago shared with Variety, took the statue to her workplace in Geneva. The outcome: the Palme d’Or because it stands immediately — a chunk of haute joaillerie in its personal proper, that includes the palm leaves motif (that symbolize the timber that line the well-known Boulevard de la Croisette, in addition to the Cannes coat-of-arms). The leaves, normal out of 118 grams of 18 carat gold, appear to be they’ve simply been ruffled by a mild breeze and are cushioned by a rock crystal in the type of an emerald-cut diamond. No two crystals are the identical, which implies that each trophy is one-of-a-kind.

Caroline Scheufele, creative director and co-president of Chopard
 
| Photo Credit: Alex Teuscher

Scheufele provides that every of the items is crafted with consciousness and a give attention to sustainability. The gold is fair-mined and “five of our Chopard expert artisans devote no less than 40 hours to hand-crafting the festival’s most coveted treasure in our Geneva workshop”.

Jewels like berries

Chopard’s give attention to sourcing ethically-mined gold may be traced again to 2012, when Scheufele met Livia Firth, the founding father of Eco-Age, at the Oscars. “When Livia asked me where our gold came from, my reply was ‘from the bank’, but that wasn’t the expected answer. There are millions of people digging up gold, often working in unsafe conditions and unfairly compensated for their work. From that moment, I was determined to embark on a mission to change not only Chopard as a company but also the entire industry,” she says.

The Palme d’Or
 

Today, Chopard sources all of its gold and diamonds via traceable routes and is working to place in place a system that may guarantee the moral mining of colored gems. These practices are the bedrock of all the jewelry they produce, together with the 2021 line. The theme, says Scheufele, is Paradise “where precious stones are picked like berries, and plants and animals offer their songs and spectacular colours”. Seventy 4 beautiful items come collectively to kind this assortment impressed by a lush Garden of Eden, together with an elephant brooch encrusted with diamonds flanked by a stable emerald dome; ruby earrings that resemble tropical flowers; and an emerald necklace with a pendant that includes a sleeping fawn normal from yellow sapphires.

Conscious storytelling

Speaking about post-pandemic jewelry shopping for developments, Scheufele says that “conscious offerings and eco-friendly narratives will be of top priority”. Which is in step with a current McKinsey analysis that signifies that 9 in 10 Gen-Z customers imagine firms have a duty to handle environmental and social points.

Chopard’s 2021 Red Carpet Collection
 

It can also be anticipated that manufacturers can be rising the variety of assortment releases and creating devoted strains which can be focussed on extra accessible items to allow “micro-splurges”. “Transparency is a key value,” says Scheufele. And whereas she agrees that technological improvements and developments are inevitable in the business, with positive jewelry, it boils right down to “the magic of the world’s rarest and most beautiful stones, unbridled creativity, and ancestral craftsmanship. When you combine the two, you achieve something truly unique.”