Livia Firth tells the story of Chopard’s The Journey to Sustainable Luxury and shares more about the celebrations held in Berlin last week themed ‘The Night of Green Emotions’.
“Rome was not built in a day” – this is what Caroline Scheufele, Chopard’s Co-President and Artistic Director, said back in 2013 to journalists who questioned her on whether it had any meaning to launch The Journey To Sustainable Luxury with just a tiny ingot of Fairmined certified gold.
Fast forward five years later – and in March this year Chopard announced that they now source 100% ethical gold.
It all started with a simple question I asked Caroline while we were having coffee in 2012 in Los Angeles, the day before the Oscars when Colin won with A King’s Speech and I was doing The Green Carpet Challenge: “Where does your gold come from?” I asked her, to which she replied steadily, “from the bank!” and immediately opened her eyes and said, “Oh my god it’s true – I have no idea! We need to change that!”
These were among the stories we shared in Berlin last Friday with journalists in a packed room at The Chopard boutique. Everyone applauded Chopard’s success and lots of questions were fired about the next steps as, to paraphrase the beginning, Caroline hasn’t finished ‘building Rome’ yet but she certainly has completed the foundations.
It is one of the pure joys of our work to partner with businesses that are so committed to change. It is often a very complex and steep road – but Chopard’s case and successes prove that not only can it be done, but also it pays back.
And being recognised and celebrated by lots of friends from all over Germany was the theme of “The Night of Green Emotions” in the stunning The Lapidarium – the “home” of Christian Boros. My dates for the night were Palina Rojinski and Franziska Knuppe – we spent the whole time talking about how much we love Lady Gaga and salivated over the incredible (Green Carpet Collection) pieces around the room.
We often speak about the “handprint” of what we wear – which is always about carrying the stories of the people who make our clothes and, in this case, jewellery. With Eco-Age we validated lots of mines and met many miners around the world for Chopard and I am excited to reveal that Caroline and I too will soon go on a mine adventure to shake the hands of the people who dig the magic ingredient of these stunning jewellery pieces.
Stay tuned!
