As the Cannes International Film Festival approaches, the Haute Joaillerie workshops of the Maison Chopard are giving life to a splendid collection dreamed up by Caroline Scheufele. An anthem to femininity and beauty, these exceptional jewellery creations will adorn the greatest actresses on the red carpet, making Chopard an inescapable lodestar when it comes to emotions and glamour.

Chopard being a partner of the Cannes Festival for 21 years, the Maison annually crafts the legendary Palme d’or, made from ethical gold certified Fairmined.  While the Haute Joaillerie ateliers are hard at work on these unique works of art inspired by Caroline Scheufele, she shares the secrets of an exceptional feather necklace – a first in the realm of Haute Joaillerie – created in conjunction with feather artist Nelly Saunier, and paying eloquent tribute to artistic crafts deeply cherished by Chopard.

Red Carpet Collection 2018 

Every year since 2007, Chopard’s Co-President and Creative Director Caroline Scheufele has been imagining a Haute Joaillerie collection taking up the extraordinary challenge of releasing a number of jewellery models equivalent to the edition number of the Festival. Stemming from her boundless imagination and from the peerless mastery of diverse skills within the Chopard workshops, a complete collection of 71 creations will be produced this year, dedicated to the world’s greatest actresses for their red carpet appearances.

This year, the Red Carpet Collection will be inspired by the many travels and dreams of its creator. Year in and year out – like the members of her family who used to travel the globe with trunks filled with precious merchandise, journeying as far as the court of the Tsar of Russia – she tirelessly tours the many countries in which the family owned Maison’s creations are present. These peregrinations are a perpetual source of inspiration for Caroline Scheufele, who captures and sketches her impressions in her travel diaries. This Red Carpet Collection, she Caroline invites us into the secret world of her reveries and personal intuitions, offering a delightful, generous and mysterious revelation. Her inspiration is stemmed by anything and everything: architecture, art, literature and cinema. A tiny detail is enough for this fervent gem lover to dream up the most splendid – and above all most ingenious – adornments. Nature also remains a powerful source of fascination for her creative mind.

A feather necklace paying homage to artistic crafts

One of the star models in the 2018 Red Carpet collection testifies to this boundless inspiration: an astonishing necklace of real feathers, inspired by the costumes and traditional skills of the peoples on the Mongolian Plateau. In a major first for the Maison, this airy creation combines a magnificent central piece. Composed of a sculpted gold cameo adorned with volutes of blue apatites, violet garnets and red jasper – with a necklace graced with rooster, grey heron, ostrich and black pheasant feathers. The resulting shimmering work of art, created in cooperation with feather artist Nelly Saunier, draws upon the mastery cultivated within the Chopard’s Haute Joaillerie ateliers, the largest in Switzerland and home to more than 45 specialised artisans.

Combining traditional crafts with technical innovation, the Chopard Haute Joaillerie ateliers are distinguished by a constant quest for new materials. For the reason that Haute Joaillerie is perpetually reinvented through the most unexpected raw materials, Caroline Scheufele imagined this unprecedented creation adorned with daintily colourful plumage. This new technical challenge was taken up in conjunction with feather artist Nelly Saunier. The encounter between the artisanal brilliance of this maître d’art – an acknowledged expert in the field for over 30 years – and that which is exercised in the Chopard workshops, testifies to the natural complementarity between age-old skills and a passion for supremely sophisticated creations.

Expert hands and nimble fingers apply a blend of patience and perseverance to crafting inestimably precious artworks. It is precisely this personal involvement of each artisan, who endows each creation with a personal spark of genius and individual expertise, that gives rise to the emotions naturally aroused by Chopard Haute Joaillerie. With this feather artistry, resulting in an inimitably soft touch and an airily light feel, the Red Carpet Collection welcomes a new sense of emotion. As Nelly Saunier loves to point out:

“birds are born with this elegance and appearances are never deceptive. They demonstrate total freedom in revealing their beauty. It is this spontaneity and this authentic form of expression that I share. Feathers are all about emotions.”

Feathers, as a new mode of jewellery embellishment.

The 71 unequivocally ingenious and stunning models in this impressive collection will be unveiled on the red carpet of the world’s largest film festival from May 8^th to 19^th 2018. A sure promise of dreams and enchantment.

Chopard and the Cannes Festival: an enduring love story

A keen film enthusiast, Caroline Scheufele has transformed her own love story with film-making into an ongoing, over 20-year partnership with the Cannes International Film Festival. The Palme d’or – which Caroline personally redesigned and is crafted within the Chopard workshops from Fairmined-certified ethical gold – is the dazzling symbol of this sparkling pairing. Eager to support the world of cinema and to promote its youthful talents, Chopard also awards a prodigious annual prize to a promising young actor and actress: the Trophée Chopard. While the workshops of the Maison are hard at work on giving life to a new range of contemporary design wonders, and the Trophée Chopard jury is commencing its deliberations, Caroline Scheufele – who is never short on ideas – is secretly preparing a series of new surprises that will ensure Chopard continues to shine on La Croisette.