How to wear jewelry
There's something in the air when it comes to fine jewels. Chopard's Caroline Scheufele
muses on the new mood.
WORDS: ZARA WONG
How to wear jewelry
"Jewelry doesn't need to be serious," says Caroline Scheufele with conviction. It's a statement the German-born co-president and artistic director of Chopard, whose family has owned the Swiss company since 1963, is well qualified to make. Her irreverent approach on how to wear jewelry highlights the tectonic shifts in fashion today. "It's something you hear a lot, but I think diamonds and jeans go very well," she continues. "When we have the big evening gown, big necklace,
and big earrings ... it's too much."
How to wear jewelry. Diamonds and jeans - cliched for sure, but for good reason: it works. Since the experimental days of the 1960s, fashion has flirted with youth culture, yet fine jewelry has always been slightly slower on the uptake. "Now there are many more parallels to fashion," explains Scheufele. "I like pink," she says with an impish smile, revealing a passion for colored stones
(the pink diamond is a favorite), while listing lesser-known stones like the pink padparadscha sapphires and tourmalines.
Chopard's origins lie in watchmaking, and the jewelry line only came about in 1985 because of Scheufeles fascination for the craft. A fine jewelry collection was| established in 1998, the same year in which the company became an official partner of the Cannes film festival. "We needed to go that step further," she recalls. And what better way to present Chopards designs than on the talents who grace the event?
At the 2012 festival, Marion Cotillard wore a Chopard diamond necklace, yet instead of adorning her decolletagc — left bare by her strapless Christian Dior couture gown - the gems were draped in
her hair. "I saw her at the premiere for her film Rust and Bone," says blogger Garance Dore, who documented the festival for Chopard, "She had a vintage-style bun and the effect was beautiful." Then there's Lana Del Rey, who wore a necklace and earring set from the house. A tad predictable, until closer inspection revealed the necklace to be a trail of tiny pave-set diamond mice.
This idiosyncratic approach is Chopard's hallmark. Model Liu Wen and Alexa Chung ("both very beautiful," Scheufele says), have chosen Chopard of late; Chung reamed an emerald ring the size of a 50 cent coin with musscd-up hair and a casual sweater. "I think jewelry has become more democratic," ponders the director, who stresses it's less about age and more about attitude. "With a little twist, [fine jewels have become] easier to wear," Times are changing, and now women who purchase jewels for themselves are a growing market for the house, Scheufele says. "More women are independent," she says. "If a man is choosing for a woman he'll go for classic - the safe choice.
How wears jewelry a woman? She goes for the design. And if they're young there are no rules at all for how to wear jewelry!"
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