Chopard Sets Its Diamonds Loose Again: Happy Diamonds Turns 50 With Bella Hadid, Liu Wen and a Revived Happy Sport

Chopard is marking the 50th anniversary of Happy Diamonds, its signature concept of loose diamonds that move freely inside a piece of jewelry or across a watch dial, with a new global campaign fronted by Bella Hadid and Liu Wen. According to the Swiss house’s own announcement, the campaign celebrates emotion, movement and free-spiritedness, and arrives alongside a revived Happy Sport watch and a fresh series of pendants. This article is based on Chopard’s press release and on coverage from three fashion and luxury publications; the house’s claims are presented as its own statements rather than independently verified facts.

What Chopard Is Announcing

In its release, Chopard frames the campaign as a tribute to its most recognizable idea: diamonds that are not pinned in place but are left to “dance.” The two faces of the campaign are Bella Hadid and Liu Wen, both described by the house as Global Ambassadors. The company positions the two models as complementary expressions of freedom, one instinctive and expressive, the other calm and controlled.

Fashion trade publication WWD reported that Chopard is tying the anniversary to events in New York, where it is showing new jewelry and watches, historical re-editions and the debut of the campaign. South African luxury title Wanted noted that Hadid has been a Chopard ambassador since 2024, while Wen is a new appointment to the house’s roster. The same outlet credited the campaign films to director Manu Cossu, with choreography by Stephen Galloway and photography by Greg Williams.

Two ambassadors, one idea

Caroline Scheufele told WWD that Hadid brings an “instinctive, vibrant energy” while Wen offers a “serene strength,” adding that she chooses ambassadors based on the person rather than appearance alone. These are the brand’s characterizations of its own campaign talent. The practical significance is that Chopard is using two very different public figures to speak to multiple markets at once, a common approach for houses with large customer bases in both Western and Asian luxury markets.

How Happy Diamonds Works, and Where It Came From

In conventional fine jewelry, a diamond is held by a setting: tiny metal prongs, a bezel or a channel that grips the stone so it cannot move. Happy Diamonds does the opposite. The stones are enclosed between two layers of sapphire crystal, the hard, scratch-resistant synthetic glass used on quality watch faces, and are left free to slide and tumble as the wearer moves. The effect is that the diamonds catch light from constantly changing angles rather than from a fixed position.

Chopard’s release describes the concept as having “overturned the codes” of watchmaking and jewelry in the mid-1970s, linking it to the social changes and women’s emancipation of that decade. Independent coverage gives a more specific date: nss magazine and Wanted both place the introduction in 1976, which lines up with the 50-year milestone the house is now celebrating.

The waterfall story

Both nss magazine and Wanted repeat the brand’s origin story: the idea was inspired by the way light breaks up in the spray of a waterfall in Germany’s Black Forest. According to nss magazine, when Karin Scheufele, who then ran the company with her husband Karl Scheufele, saw the first prototype, she summed it up with a phrase that became an informal motto, that diamonds are happiest when they are free. Caroline Scheufele repeated a version of that line to WWD. As with most brand founding stories, this account comes from the company itself and should be read as heritage storytelling rather than documented history.

Happy Sport: From a 1993 Gamble to “The First”

The press release describes Happy Sport as “the watch most collected by women” and credits it to Caroline Scheufele’s “passion and joie de vivre.” The house claims the line has grown into more than 1,000 variations since its launch in the 1990s. Neither the collecting claim nor the variation count is verifiable from the materials reviewed here, and both should be understood as Chopard’s own marketing assertions.

What the independent coverage adds is the detail of why the original mattered. According to Wanted and nss magazine, the 1993 Happy Sport was the first model to put moving diamonds directly onto a watch dial, and it combined steel with diamonds at a time when fine watchmaking rarely paired an everyday industrial metal with precious stones. Scheufele told WWD she was “simply designing the watch I wanted to wear myself” and that the steel-and-diamond mix “seemed unusual, even provocative.” In retrospect, the pairing anticipated a broader shift toward luxury pieces designed for daily wear rather than special occasions.

The anniversary pieces

The centerpiece of the anniversary is Happy Sport The First, a reissue that revisits the 1993 design while updating its proportions, according to Wanted. Alongside it, Chopard has introduced new Happy Diamonds pendants based on a rectangular silhouette the house first designed in 2006, now reworked with more open volumes so the stones have more room to move. nss magazine reported that the pendants are intended to be worn without gender distinctions.

Source note: Specifications as described by Chopard and reported by Wanted and nss magazine. Prices and launch dates were not included in the materials reviewed.

“Little Diamonds Do Great Things”: The Scheufele Narrative

A large portion of the press release is devoted to Caroline Scheufele’s personal history. Chopard says she was born into a family of watchmakers, designed her first watch as a child from aluminum foil, and as a teenager sketched a clown pendant with small dancing diamonds inside its belly. According to the house, her father had the workshops produce the piece in secret, and it became the first Chopard jewelry creation, as well as a popular gift from fathers to daughters.

This story serves a clear purpose: it ties the Happy Diamonds concept to a single creative figure and to a family lineage, which is valuable to a house that competes with brands owned by large luxury conglomerates. Chopard remains family-run, and Scheufele’s dual title of Co-President and Artistic Director, as stated in the release, underlines that positioning. Readers should note that the clown anecdote is a first-party account; no independent documentation of it was available in the sources consulted.

Materials, Ethics and What “Lucent Steel” Means

The new watches are offered in what Chopard calls Lucent Steel, a proprietary steel alloy the brand markets for its brightness and durability. According to Wanted, the alloy has an 80 percent recycling rate. The gold used across the collection is described as “ethical gold,” which Chopard has used in all of its watches and jewelry since 2018, a point confirmed in both the Wanted and WWD coverage. Scheufele told WWD that “sustainability was not yet part of the industry’s conversation” when the original Happy Sport launched.

Shoppers should understand that “ethical gold” and “Lucent Steel” are brand-defined terms. In the jewelry industry, ethical or responsibly sourced gold typically refers to metal traced to artisanal mines certified by third-party schemes or to recycled sources, but the exact definition and verification process vary by company. The sources reviewed for this article describe Chopard’s commitments but do not include independent audits of them. Consumers who care about sourcing may want to ask the brand directly for its certification details.

What Remains Unknown

Several practical details are missing from the release and the coverage. No prices were given for Happy Sport The First or the new pendants, and no retail launch dates or regional availability were specified beyond the New York events mentioned by WWD. The release also does not clarify whether the historical re-editions WWD referenced are limited runs or permanent additions to the catalog.

Technical specifications for the watches, such as the movement type, water resistance and whether the models are quartz or mechanical, were not described in any of the sources consulted. For a collector, those details matter as much as the design. Until Chopard publishes full specifications, the anniversary pieces should be evaluated on the basis of the design heritage described above rather than on performance claims.

Conclusion

Fifty years on, the core proposition of Happy Diamonds is unusually simple for a luxury signature: put diamonds somewhere they can move and let the wearer’s gestures do the rest. Chopard’s anniversary campaign leans heavily on that simplicity, using two contrasting ambassadors and a choreography-driven film to make a 1976 idea feel current, while a revived 1993 watch connects the concept to Caroline Scheufele’s own design history.

The strength of the launch lies in the recognizability of the idea rather than in any technical breakthrough. Its limits are equally clear: the house’s claims about collectability, variation counts and family lore come from Chopard itself, and the ethical-sourcing language relies on brand-defined terms. For anyone considering the new pieces, the sensible approach is to appreciate the design story on its merits, wait for full specifications and pricing, and treat the heritage narrative as what it is, a well-crafted account from the company that has every reason to tell it.