Chopard

Chopard is a Swiss watch and jewellery house founded in 1860 and headquartered in Geneva. It has been owned by the Scheufele family since 1963 and is still run as a family business, with Caroline and Karl-Friedrich Scheufele as co-presidents [5]. Its core trade is watchmaking and fine jewellery; within beauty, the company is present through a licensed line of fragrances sold under its Haute Parfumerie collection.

The Maison remains active, with current 2026 collections and ongoing partnerships at the Cannes Film Festival and the Mille Miglia rally. For the purposes of a beauty catalogue, the relevant part of its output is perfume rather than its watches and jewellery.

The company was established in 1860 by Louis-Ulysse Chopard (1836–1915), then a 24-year-old watchmaker, in the village of Sonvilier in the Swiss Jura [1][5]. According to the company's own history, he set out to build a high-precision watch manufactory, and the firm passed down the family line after his death in 1915, to his son Paul-Louis and grandson Paul-André.

Geographically the business moved more than once. It relocated to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1921 and then, in 1937, to Geneva, where it could obtain the Geneva Seal certification [5]. Geneva has remained its base since.

In 1963, Paul-André Chopard sold the company to Karl Scheufele III, a goldsmith and watchmaker from Pforzheim in Germany who was looking to secure his own watch manufacturer [5]. The sale began the Scheufele family's ownership, which continues today; the firm has stayed privately held rather than passing to a larger luxury group. Caroline Scheufele and Karl-Friedrich Scheufele now serve as co-presidents.

The fragrance side of the business follows a separate ownership pattern, since Chopard licenses its perfumes rather than producing them in-house (see Products below).

Several of the house's defining products and partnerships date from the second half of the 20th century. The Happy Diamonds line, built around diamonds that move freely between two sapphire crystals, was introduced in 1976, and the Happy Sport watch followed in 1993. The company established its long-running partnership with the Mille Miglia car rally in 1988, and in 1998 it became an official partner of the Cannes Film Festival, for which it designs the Palme d'Or trophy.

From 2013 the company began what it calls a Journey to Sustainable Luxury, focused initially on ethical gold sourcing, and in 2018 it committed to using 100% ethical gold across its production.

Chopard positions itself in the luxury segment and frames its identity around craftsmanship, describing its makers as "Artisans of Emotions". Family ownership and heritage feature prominently in how it presents itself. The fragrance collection extends that positioning into perfume: the company describes its Haute Parfumerie line as luxury perfumes for men and women "inspired by the most emblematic gardens in the world," summed up as "an ode to glamorous green."

Watches and jewellery are the company's principal output, but its beauty relevance rests on the Haute Parfumerie fragrance collection. That line is organised into four sub-collections — Les Origines, Les Imaginaires, Les Ouds and Les Fleurs Bijoux — and includes scents such as Tubéreuse Maharané, Gardénia Tahia, Bois Nomades and Santal Odeyar; the women's perfume Love Chopard sits alongside the haute parfumerie range. According to the company, the perfumes are made with "natural and sustainably sourced ingredients."

The fragrances are produced under licence rather than by Chopard itself, and that licence has changed hands more than once. Chopard first entered fragrance through a partnership with L'Oréal in 1992 [7], then spent more than two decades under Coty before working with the Swiss fragrance house Firmenich on a 2022 range of perfumes [6]. As of January 2025, the Italian company Give Back Beauty — founded in 2019, and a perfume maker for several luxury brands — is reported to hold the Chopard fragrance licence [7]. Firmenich's role as a fragrance developer and Give Back Beauty's role as the brand licensee are distinct: one composes the scents, the other holds the commercial licence.

On the watch and jewellery side, the company points to two developments it describes as decisive: the use of what it calls Ethical Gold, and the launch of a recycled stainless steel it markets as Lucent Steel [3].

The Journey to Sustainable Luxury, begun in 2013, is the company's main sustainability programme, and it credits the initiative to the Scheufele family. Chopard says it has worked to improve the sustainability of its production through ethical gold sourcing, ecodesign, a 2030 Carbon Plan and circularity measures, and it references certification frameworks including the Responsible Jewellery Council and the Science Based Targets initiative [3]. In the 2022 fragrance launch, the company highlighted responsibly sourced ingredients and FSC-certified paper packaging [6].

In 2015 and again in 2020, the actress Marion Cotillard designed sustainable jewellery collections for the company [5].

Chopard is active. It maintains a working e-commerce site with current collections, including its Red Carpet 2026 high jewellery, and continues its Cannes and Mille Miglia partnerships. Its most recent fragrance-related news is the January 2025 report identifying Give Back Beauty as its perfume licensee [7].