Caroline Scheufele Chopard Happy
Caroline Scheufele Chopard Happy Caroline Scheufele Chopard Happy

The Happy Diamonds watch marked a turning point in Chopard’s manufacturing history. Introduced to the market when Caroline Scheufele was only a teenager, this iconic design inspired her early work even when she became vice president of the Chopard business many years later.

Being the daughter of Karl and Karin Scheufele, Caroline inherited a natural fascination with the work into which her parents invested so much creative energy. This devotion of the production of world-class watches and jewellery had an effect on her – Caroline Scheufele inherited that passion and, from a young age, she spent much of her time learning the trade of Chopard and coming up with creations of her own.

In 1993, Caroline released her new design – the Happy Sport of Chopard. Combining the intricate manufacturing practice of placing floating stones within a watch surface, it finally made high quality Swiss design accessible to women who would have never considered a luxury watch before.

Now that the watch has been an industry benchmark and a fashion icon for more than 25 years, it’s time to look back at Caroline Scheufele‘s impact on Chopard and their Happy Diamonds line.

Chopard Happy Diamonds

The story of the Happy Sport watch started with the original Happy Diamonds design by Chopard. Introduced in 1976, Happy Diamonds revolutionised the traditional watch market with a design that other brands failed to replicate because of the extraordinary level of quality and precision Chopard’s team of craftspeople provide to each piece.

The floating diamonds design was mastered and perfected by Ronald Kurowski, one of Chopard’s senior experienced designers. The original watch was produced with 5 flawless diamonds positioned between two sapphire crystals on each side of the watch face.

Ronald Kurowski decided to develop the design when he found a waterfall when walking in the Black Forest of Germany. After seeing the light reflecting from the water droplets flying off from the waterfall, he recognised that the same concept could be applied to a jewellery design.

The diamonds float thanks to the chamfered base on the gold bezel on each of the stones. The two sapphire crystals making up the face and the back of the watch then provide a frictionless surface upon which the jewels can slide.

Over the years, new designs have been produced that build upon this motif – including necklaces, rings, and pendants.

Interestingly, one of the first pieces designed by Caroline Scheufele was for a future Happy Diamonds collection. When Caroline was 16, she drew a design for a clown-shaped pendant with a hollow interior to hold a set of floating gems.

Her father, Karl Scheufele III, saw the design and he gave it to one of his designers. The completed clown pendant was then given back to Caroline for her birthday.

Happy Sport

The Happy Sport is, to date, Caroline Scheufele’s biggest contribution to the much celebrated Happy Diamonds brand. With her fascination for the collection stemming from her passions and experience as a teenager, she set her sights to amending the design for women who might have felt that the original watch was too high-end for their tastes.

She did this by removing the original gold wrist strap and bezel for a stylish stainless steel replacement. To quote Caroline Scheufele, “the strength of the Happy Sport is that you can wear it all day long, with any outfit, and this is precisely why I designed it.”

The design of the Happy Sport was totally unprecedented amongst watchmakers at the time. Mixing diamonds with a steel watch made something that was high glamour now functional and obtainable – a goal no other maison was pursuing at the time.

In the 25 years the watch has been on the market, Happy Sport has been released in 1,000 separate variations. This is why, according to Chopard, the Happy Sport watch has become the timepiece most collected by women. This speaks to Caroline’s inventive nature – to find new ways to innovate on a product that has already been developed for multiple decades.

One recent innovation was the change in prong setting to the diamonds within the Happy Sport watches. Caroline Scheufeule said that “the diamonds sparkle even more in their free and playful space, intensifying a wonderful spectrum of light as they spin.” when interviewed for Luxuo.

Chopard is a company unafraid to make changes to their best products and for which innovation, imagination, and reinvention is in its corporate DNA. Because of this, Happy Diamonds has remained relevant for over 40 years and it remains a best seller for the company.