Star Of The Show

Why Chopard's high-jewellery masterpieces were the real stars of this year’s Cannes Film Festival

JOHN THATCHER

Last month’s staging of the annual Cannes Film Festival — the 76th time it has attracted film’s finest to Cannes’ historic La Croisette — saw the world’s media eagerly await the appearance of Johnny Depp. Unofficially shunned by Hollywood (fallout from the claims made by his ex-wife Amber Heard and upheld by a British court in Depp’s unsuccessful libel case against the UK’s leading tabloid), this was Depp’s return to the spotlight, the big league, and he lapped it up — blowing kisses, shaking hands, and briefly dabbing at his eyes. The film he was there to promote, Jeanne Du Barry, would later receive a seven-minute standing ovation cue more emotion.

Emotion of a more edifying nature was generated by Chopard, whose annual red carpet showing of exceptional artistry was, as ever, showstopping.

Indeed, Chopard at Cannes is a love story fit for film, and it began way back in 1998. That was the year the brand’s artistic director and co-president, Caroline Scheufele, was invited by Pierre Viot (then the festival’s director) to redesign the Palme d'Or, the coveted trophy that has been presented to the director of the festival’s best film since 1955. But it’s another trophy that best emphasises Chopard’s deep passion for film.

An initiative of Scheufele’s, the Trophée Chopard a silver-coated gold film reel, set on a glass base that she also designed was created to honour rising talents within the film industry, ensuring that emerging stars would not be overshadowed by their megawatt counterparts, who descend on the South of France each May to soak up the glamour as much as the sun.

There is simply nothing to overshadow

Scheufele’s other creative homage to Cannes, the always-challenging, evermagnificent Red Carpet Collection, an annual bounty of beautiful high jewellery creations. She debuted it in 2007 to mark 10 years of Chopard as the festival’s official partner. That year was also the 60th edition of the festival, a milestone that gave Scheufele the impetus to challenge herself to create 60 one-of-a-kind pieces.

As a testament to her undimmed passion for sketching the extraordinary, each year Scheufele ups by one the total number of pieces in the collection to keep in step with the festival’s timeline. For good measure, she also dares to design around a different theme.

This year’s Red Carpet Collection therefore comprises 76 remarkable pieces, each one designed around the theme of art. A fitting way to describe their rare beauty.

Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, literature, dance, and cinema were the stimuli for Scheufele’s extraordinary expressions, ideas shaped by both the beauty of the natural world and enriching encounters on her numerous travels, and thrillingly given form by the highly skilled artisans inside Chopard’s storied workshop, their expert knowledge passed down from their predecessors, their practical skills time-honoured but always sharpened to cut a new way through a technical challenge. For this collection, new materials such as titanium were employed alongside novel stone-cutting techniques and, as always, a dash of avant-garde spirit. These one-of-a-kind creations are given due respect by the painstaking selection of the precious stones that grace them: colour, volume, transparency, only the most extraordinary examples of each are used — while adhering to Chopard’s overarching sustainability principles. The most extraordinary example is the 127-carat yellow sapphire that sits at the heart of a magnificent ring, where it’s cradled by antique-style figurines hand-sculpted from gold and emanating from a diamond-set base. Another is a beautiful pear-shaped tanzanite, which weighs more than 32 carats and dangles from a necklace crafted from tinted titanium, while jaw dropping is the Fairmined-certified ethical 18-carat white and yellow gold necklace, set with pear-shaped (101.86 cts), marquise-cut (116.30 cts) and brilliant-cut (2.26 cts) yellow diamonds, as well as pear-shaped (43.40 cts) and brilliant-cut (1.94 cts) white diamonds. A pair of enchanting earrings and a stunning ring complete the set.

Scheufele’s passion for the performing arts is indulged in a necklace and matching pair of earrings, both of which make a feature of dainty diamond corollas, designed to evoke a visual comparison with the tutus worn by ballet dancers. Music, meanwhile, is reimagined through a Fairminedcertified ethical white gold choker, delicately set into rows of briolettecut diamonds to resemble the lines of a musical score. And a glorious burst of colour characterises a cuff bracelet in Fairmined-certified ethical 18-carat white gold and titanium, set with an oval-shaped garnet (12.11 cts), oval-shaped mandarine garnets (10.79 cts), rose-cut yellow-orange sapphires (129.55 cts), brilliantcut yellow sapphires (1.01 cts), and brilliant-cut diamonds (12.12 cts).

Johnny Depp may have hogged the headlines, but the biggest star at Cannes will always be Chopard.