PROFILES

The copresident of Chopard, the Cannes Festival's corporate partner and a leading advocate of ethical gold, has successfully positioned the Swiss name among high jewellery's greatest.

COTE: 2017 is a doubly important year: the 70th Cannes Festival and the 20th that Chopard has partnered. How did it start?
Twenty years ago we had just opened a shop on the Croisette, opposite the Palais. I've always loved the cinema and I wanted to take an active part in this Festival I consider the world's most important. So I met Pierre Viot – then the Festival's director – in Paris to talk about a possible partnership, and I left with the Palme d’Or under my arm!

Why did the director hand the Palm over to you?
He felt it needed restyling as the design hadn't changed in 50 years. I told him my business wasn't actually about organising celebrity events but about designing jewellery, so he took the Palm from a shelf behind him and gave it to me. It was completely unexpected, incredible!

When did you launch the Red Carpet collection?
Since 1997 we'd been creating one-off and special pieces for the Festival, with the idea of one day launching a specific collection, which we have now been doing for 10 years. That's why it's called Red Carpet; each year it comprises the same number of fine jewellery pieces as the Festival year, so for this 70th anniversary we created 70 items.

Where do you get your inspiration?
Although the collections are different each year, I always draw on two sources of inspiration: women, in this case actresses, in all their diversity of age, personality, hair colour, posture, style etc.; and the stones we're going to use, emeralds or diamonds for example, trying to get as close as possible to the idea of a colourful rainbow. 

Colour is a big feature of the collection designed with Rihanna.

Yes! This year we decided to produce a capsule collection with the singer, including a necklace inspired by her native Barbados, full of colour and a little bit bohemian.

Tell us about the Green Carpet initiative...
Six years ago I met actor Colin Firth's wife, Livia, who is very involved in sustainable development. She made me realise that although there was ethical fashion, the big jewellery names weren't using ethical gold. I talked about this with my brother; the idea fits with our vision and as Chopard is a family-owned business we were able to implement it much more easily than as part of a group.

So you chose to use Fairmined gold and Gemfields stones.
Yes. The certified gold and stones come from mines that have introduced measures both to minimise their impact on the environment and to guarantee their workers a regular fixed income so they can live a normal family life, sending their children to school for example. We source from the first mine of this kind in Botswana.

Does it account for a large part of your production?

Initially we used only 50kg a year but now we're up to 300kg. This gold is processed separately in our workshops, it never comes into contact with any non-Fairmined metal. These are complex procedures to set up but all our staff understood what was at stake.

At stake?
Yes, this is about preserving our planet and respecting human beings, as well as giving added-value and meaning to the jewellery we create. We see sustainability as the future of high jewellery. I hope that in the very near future Europe will introduce the same rules as already apply in industry.

Alexandre Benoist