Chopard’s Most Glamorous Era Gets a Brilliant Revival
Observer ·
Alongside Cartier, Piaget and Bulgari, the maison has spent decades blurring the line between timepiece and jewelry. Its modern L’Heure du Diamant collection shows why its reputation endures.
A yellow-gold cuff watch with a tiger’s-eye dial, a diamond-set timepiece with a deep blue lapis lazuli face and another with a textured gold bracelet resembling tree bark were among the vintage creations Chopard brought out of its archives for a traveling exhibition dedicated to the house’s history in jewelry watchmaking. The presentation, titled “L’Heure du Diamant,” has thus far traveled internationally, with stops in Geneva, Dubai, Cannes and Paris, before arriving in the United States. According to Chopard, the American itinerary includes Palm Beach and New York, with an edition planned for Miami during Art Basel in December. Its recent New York showing, hosted with Observer at the Core Club on Fifth Avenue , brought together 16 historical watches—most from the Chopard Museum in Geneva—alongside select contemporary pieces from the brand’s catalog.
The archival watches date primarily to the early 1970s, a notably creative period for the maison that helped establish many of the design signatures still found in its jewelry watches. Among the highlights are a 1965 white-gold watch with a Milanese mesh bracelet and 100 diamonds, and a 1970 Bonaire model—a best-seller at the time—with a nephrite jade dial and 170 diamonds. Other pieces feature opal, onyx, turquoise and lapis lazuli dials, most paired with elaborate bracelets and case shapes that blur the distinction between jewelry and watchmaking.
Today, Chopard stands alongside names like Cartier , Piaget and Bulgari as one of the leading houses in luxury jewelry watches. Its expertise in sculptural goldwork, ornamental stone dials and elaborate gem-setting is evident throughout the exhibition, which traces how the brand developed its distinctive aesthetic over several decades.
Chopard’s history dates to 1860, when Louis-Ulysse Chopard founded his watchmaking business in Switzerland. Its expertise in jewelry watches, however, owes much to the Scheufele family, which acquired the company more than a century later. The family’s involvement in jewelry and watchmaking began in Pforzheim, Germany, where Karl Scheufele I established the Eszeha manufacture in 1904. Specializing in watches and luxury accessories made from gold and platinum, the business produced elaborate designs influenced by the Belle Époque before adopting the geometric forms and diamond settings of Art Deco during the 1920s.
The company passed through successive generations before Karl Scheufele III —then leading the family business alongside his wife, Karin—purchased Chopard in 1963. The acquisition brought together Chopard’s Swiss watchmaking heritage and the Scheufeles’ experience in jewelry production, ultimately setting the stage for the brand’s expansion into the luxury house it is today.
By the late 1960s, Chopard was building a reputation for jewelry watches, going on to win 15 Golden Rose of Baden-Baden awards in the years that followed, according to the brand. Its advertising at the time featured the French slogan Maîtres de la montre-bijou, or Masters of Jewelry Watches, reflecting the growing importance of the category.
The 1970s brought greater experimentation with ornamental stones, colorful dials and sculptural bracelets. Milanese mesh, engraved gold and textured finishes became recurring elements, while watches took on increasingly unconventional forms. Rather than simply adding diamonds to traditional cases, Chopard was treating the entire watch as a piece of jewelry—an approach readily apparent in the archival pieces featured in the exhibition.
That long history of combining haute joaillerie and watchmaking continues in the modern L’Heure du Diamant collection, first introduced in 2012 and expanded earlier this year with four new white-gold models. The collection draws heavily on Chopard’s archives, combining elaborate diamond settings, decorative dials and precious-metal bracelets with finely finished mechanical movements.
In recent years, the collection has also seen several technical developments. In 2024, Chopard introduced its Caliber 10.01-C, a hand-wound movement measuring just 15.7mm in diameter and 2.9mm thick, designed specifically for the brand’s smaller jewelry watches. A year later, Chopard introduced the first moonphase complication within L’Heure du Diamant.
The four new models are each crafted in 18-karat ethical white gold. Among them is a round watch with a mother-of-pearl dial, an asymmetrical floral-inspired diamond bezel and a bark-finished bracelet. Two others feature black onyx dials with diamond-set hour markers and hands, offered in round and cushion-shaped cases.
The fourth is perhaps the most interesting in the context of the exhibition. Inspired by a design from the Scheufele family’s workshops in the 1960s, the watch features a 33mm cushion-shaped case with a bezel set with 24 pear-shaped diamonds. Its fluted white-gold dial carries a repeating pattern of ridges that continues into the matching integrated bracelet. A pair of matte black hands provides contrast against the otherwise monochromatic design, while Chopard’s automatic Caliber 09.01-C powers the watch. The design is also offered in rose gold, with the same fluted dial and bracelet and diamond-set bezel.
It’s an aesthetic that would look at home among the archival pieces from the early 1970s, when similar bracelets and unconventional dials were central to Chopard’s work. The New York exhibition offered a rare opportunity to see these historical watches alongside the contemporary pieces they continue to inspire, and the family resemblance was hard to miss.