Chopard has pulled out all the stops to make sure it shines during Cannes.
On Friday, the jeweller’s co-president and artistic director, Caroline Scheufele, co-hosted the Trophée Chopard at the Cannes Film Festival, which runs from 13 to 24 May. Angelina Jolie presented the trophy to French actress Marie Colomb and British actor Finn Bennett. Among the 260 guests at the glamorous dinner were Juliette Binoche, Halle Berry, Quentin Tarantino, and around 80 Chopard clients.
On 19 May, Chopard took around 242 clients to the Cannes Mandelieu airport for a show in a redecorated hangar featuring its latest high jewellery offering, the Red Carpet collection, and its third collection of Scheufele’s fashion line, Caroline’s Couture. And later this week, Scheufele’s brother and co-president Karl-Friedrich Scheufele will host a “gentlemen s evening” celebrating Chopard’s watches, preceded by a masterclass on high watchmaking for clients.
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Chopard — one of the last independent watch and jewellery houses — is the sixth-largest jewellery brand behind Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef Arpels, Bulgari and Graff with sales of €734 million in 2024, according to Morgan Stanley estimates. Though not the largest in scale, it has succeeded in keeping the coveted partnership contract as official sponsor of Cannes for almost three decades, since 1998 (Chopard has a 10-year contract, but the brand declined to say when it was last renewed).
Beyond the contract, its history is long-standing: Chopard has been honouring young acting talents with the Trophée Chopard since 2001, an event which is part of the official festival calendar. Past Trophée Chopard winners include Marion Cotillard, Anya Taylor-Joy and Florence Pugh. Caroline Scheufele is also behind the 1998 redesign of the iconic Palme d’Or award, which honours the best film screened at the Cannes International Film Festival. For its part, Cartier is the official partner of the Venice International Film Festival.
Cannes is strategically smart for Chopard: it not only offers extraordinary moments to its clients, but it also allows the brand to stand out through its positioning in cinema — a valuable orbit for fashion to be in. The partnership also gives it unique access to the jury (the jury, including Binoche, Berry and Jeremy Strong, attended the Trophée Chopard dinner) and to the red carpet, which can have a direct impact on sales of high jewellery pieces. Chopard global ambassador Bella Hadid, whose viral reach is beyond question, wore a massive emerald on the red carpet for the opening ceremony. There’s no doubt that adding a red carpet story increases the desirability of that earring for high jewellery clients. Using the Cannes platform to unveil its new high jewellery collection has the advantage of being able to attract celebrities who are in town.
Other jewellery brands that are not official sponsors face constraints on directly branding and linking to the event, but can still gain visibility by dressing celebrities on the red carpet.
It’s not just an opportunity to adorn celebrity clients in jewels. Scheufele now also designs clothes that go hand in hand with the high jewellery. She started her couture line, Caroline’s Couture, in 2023, followed by a second collection, focusing on how necklines can highlight a necklace or earrings. “Couture is here because of the high jewellery and to embellish women,” she told Vogue Business on Thursday during a preview of her third couture collection held at the Chopard rooftop on the seventh floor of Hôtel Martinez.
Caroline’s Couture’s third collection is bigger: 78 silhouettes to mark the 78th edition of the festival. The new collection features a hand-pleated off-white silk georgette evening gown, a siren skirt in golden Swiss guipure motifs worn with a white shirt and a short corset dress. The collection also includes men’s looks to go with the watches, six hats in collaboration with Irish milliner Philip Treacy and shoes with Italian shoe brand Casadei. Prices span from €5,000 for a blouse to €50,000 for a gown. Caroline’s Couture pieces travel with the high jewellery and are sold by appointment only. “We are still small, but we have enough orders,” Scheufele says.
It makes sense that the brand is going all in: the festival is the most important moment of the year for the brand in terms of high jewellery sales, according to the house. Very early on, Scheufele understood the importance of crafting experiences for her clients, creating occasions to wear high jewellery, like a star-studded dinner at Cannes, and offering access to what money cannot buy.
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Correction: This article has been updated to correct the number of Chopard clients at the Cannes Mandelieu show to 242. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated it was 120 clients (22/5/25).
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