There’s figurative art, and there are figurative watches. This new watch by Chopard reflects Chopard co-president Karl-Friedrich Scheufele’s passion for vintage and classic cars, and in particular for the atmosphere of the Mille Miglia rally, a race that Chopard has been deeply involved with since 1988. The dial is great. The seconds hand has the red-white speedometer…
The L.U.C XPS 1860 by Chopard is a slim dress watch in two versions, in rose gold and steel. Their basic design is very similar, with differences in dial finish and movement. It celebrates the L.U.C 1860 launched 20 years ago, the first watch made by the Chopard Manufacture with an in-house movement, the result of…
Caroline Scheufele, Artistic Director and Co-President of Chopard, had a brilliant intuition back in the early 1990s, when she liberated diamonds from their fixed settings in watches and jewellery and invented the Happy Sport range. Five diamonds in mobile settings move on the dial, between two sapphire discs, the watchglass and another disc below. The…
The Mille Miglia 2016 XL Race Edition by Chopard has a lot going for it. A highly legible dial, an in-house movement, limited edition. Chopard issues a new watch celebrating the Mille Miglia race every year, and this is the largest so far, at 46 mm in diameter. The case is just over 14 mm…
Chronométrie Ferdinand Berthoud is a new brand owned by Chopard, whose Co-President Karl-Friedrich Scheufele acquired the right to use the name in 2006. Like other analogous relaunches of watchmakers of the past, such as Arnold & Son and Graham, Ferdinand Berthoud is not just a way of purchasing a chunk of watchmaking history: it reflects…
Chopard has its own gold foundry, which gives them the chance to choose the sort of precious metals that they use for their watches and jewellery. The L.U.C XPS Fairmined is a men’s dress watch made using Fairmined gold, for which the gold has been responsibly mined, and the miners have been fairly treated and…
For a few years now, blue has been one of the trend colours in watches, and the women’s watch L.U.C XPS 35mm Esprit de Fleurier by Chopard is a good example. The XPS has long been a classic men’s dress watch, and the XPS 35 mm was introduced in 2014. This year’s new version, a…
The name is very symbolic. L.U.C. is a reference to Louis-Ulysse Chopard, the watchmaker who founded the brand in 1860; 1963 is the year in which Paul André Chopard sold the company to Karl Scheufele, transferring ownership from one private family to another. With all this history, it is not surprising that Chopard developed a…
The L.U.C. Regulator by Chopard, presented at Baselworld 2015, is a new version of an existing model, with a new case. The Regulator is a traditional pattern, based on clocks in watchmaking workshops, with just a very large minute hand (there are three such clocks in Chopard’s L.U.CEUM Museum in Fleurier). The watchmaker would use…
The Audi Quattro (or Kvattro, as the Germans pronounce it) has four-wheel drive, the L.U.C. Quattro has four barrels. Meaning four mainsprings, giving it an exceptional power reserve of 216 hours, or nine days. At Baselworld 2015, Chopard presented two new versions of the L.U.C. Quattro, one with rose gold case and brown dial, and the…
Happy Sport by Chopard has become a very large collection and it is one of the brand’s most popular watches. Chopard’s determination to reinforce its horological positioning is shown by recent developments in the Happy Sport range, which from its launch in 1993 acquired its first 36 mm models with mechanical movements in 2013. This…
Happy Fish by Chopard was first launched in 2002, itself one of the many variations on the Happy Diamonds theme created in 1993 by Caroline Scheufele and featuring diamonds free to move between two sapphire crystals. In this 25-piece limited edition, the fish is sculpted in mother-of-pearl, with hand-applied gold leaf decoration and jasper eye.…
This piece in the Chopard Mille Miglia GTS collection differs from the three-hand Automatic and the Power Control, which have in-house Chopard movements, because the Chrono has a third-party movement, the ETA Valjoux 7750 automatic chronograph calibre, providing 48 hours power reserve, and a COSC-certified chronometer. The Chrono is a millimetre wider than the other…
This three-hand chronometer by Chopard is one of the three redesigned Mille Miglia GTS models introduced this year. Its style is all about motor-racing, and more specifically that very genteel and classic style of motor-racing that is the Mille Miglia which now sees vintage car owners (including Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, co-President of Chopard) and their personality…
The Mille Miglia collection has been an important part of the Chopard range from its launch in 1998, and this year it has been extensively revamped. For the first time, Chopard in-house movements are used. There is a lot of red on the dials, providing a strong sense of family identity, along with the powerful…
This is a special limited edtiion by Chopard marking Porsche’s return to Le Mans for the LMP1 Endurance World Championship, after 16 years absence. The 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans will be held on 13-14 June at Le Mans in France. The watch has “919” on a red logo at 9 o’clock, and its…
Company profile: Chopard is a rare example of a watchmaking company that has remained an independent, family-run business from its origins up until today. Chopard was founded in 1860 in Sonvillier, Switzerland, by young watchmaker Louis-Ulysse Chopard. His watches soon became successful, and in 1921 his son Paul Louis Chopard opened another branch in La…
We have just begun the year of the goat (19 February 2015-7 February 2016), and several watch brands have launched goat watches thinking specifically of the Chinese market. While I can understand this, to be honest these goat watches are so far removed from the brands’ habitual style that they may seem more of a marketing…
The 2015 Oscars ceremony gave a lot of fashion designers the chance to showcase their garments, and there were some watches as well. Presenter Naomi Watts wore a Giorgio Armani Privé gown, and she was wearing a jewellery bracelet that looked like a watch but was in fact simply the Wallis Simpson bracelet by Anna…
Green is the colour of jade and amethyst and so it often appears on jewellery watches. But there are a few men’s watches made in this colour, and they immediately become very distinctive items purely because probably about 90% of all watches sold are predominantly silvery. So let’s take a look at these ten green…