Some jewellery is designed to stay perfectly in place. Chopard’s Happy Diamonds were created to do exactly the opposite. For 50 years, the Maison has allowed diamonds to move freely between sapphire crystals, turning the wearer’s gestures into part of the design. Now, to mark the anniversary of a concept first introduced in 1976, Chopard is returning to that idea of movement with a new generation of Happy Diamonds jewellery, the fresh take on the Happy Sport, and a cinematic campaign starring Bella Hadid and Liu Wen.
Bella Hadid, a Chopard ambassador since 2024, appears alongside newly appointed Maison ambassador Liu Wen in a series of films and images built around movement, gesture, personality, light and, of course, diamonds.
The contrast between them is intentional. Hadid brings what Chopard describes as an instinctive, spontaneous energy, while Liu Wen’s presence is quieter and more deliberate. Together, they represent two different expressions of the freedom the collection is designed around.
“For 50 years, the dance of Happy Diamonds have mirrored freedom,” says Caroline Scheufele. “Through this campaign, we wanted to celebrate that movement, both intimate and universal, that animates both the diamonds and those who wear them.”
In the campaign, movement becomes a way of expressing emotion. Every gesture sends the diamonds into motion, allowing them to respond to the body rather than simply decorate it. At times energetic and unpredictable, at others quieter and more refined, their movement shifts with the wearer, reflecting changes in mood, pace and presence. The result is a visual language built around spontaneity, with light and motion, turning the diamonds into an extension of the person wearing them.
Director Manu Cossu gives the campaign a cinematic language drawn from fashion, beauty and the mythology of movie-star glamour, while choreographer Stephen Galloway uses contemporary dance as a reference point for the smallest physical gestures. Photographer Greg Williams, meanwhile, moves closer, focusing on skin, reflections and fleeting expressions rather than immaculate stillness.
Fifty Years of Freedom
At its core, Happy Diamonds presents a deceptively simple idea that has shaped the collection since its beginning: diamonds become alive when they are allowed to move. A idea 50 years old, yet stunningly contemporary.
The Happy Diamonds story began with an unlikely image. In 1976, a Chopard designer was inspired by sunlight breaking across the spray of a waterfall in Germany’s Black Forest. The effect led to a new way of setting diamonds, suspending them between transparent sapphire crystals rather than fixing them into a conventional setting making them free, as if floating within each piece.
The result was Happy Diamonds: stones that could glide, spin and shift with every movement of the body.
That original philosophy remains intact in the latest collection, but the form around it has evolved. Chopard has revisited a rectangular Happy Diamonds pendant first introduced in 2006, opening up the proportions so that the diamonds have even more room to move. Softly bevelled edges catch the light, while a newly designed rectangular-link chain echoes the geometry of the pendant itself.
The new series comprises seven pendants in total, each suspended from the contemporary rectangular-link chain. Compact 16.5 mm versions come in ethical yellow, rose or white gold, each containing three moving diamonds, while elongated 25.4 mm versions offer a more architectural interpretation of the same idea. The white-gold pieces add pavé-set diamonds and introduce a new bevelled castle setting intended to make the surrounding stones appear almost suspended in light.
At the top of the collection sits a 49 mm High Jewellery pendant in ethical white gold crafted within the Maison’s Haute Joaillerie atelier. Seven diamonds tumble within its centre, framed by trapeze and emerald-cut diamonds.
Happy Sport Goes Back to the Beginning
The anniversary also brings Chopard back to another important moment in its history.
When Caroline Scheufele created Happy Sport in 1993, combining steel with diamonds was an unexpected move. Luxury watches traditionally kept the two worlds apart; Happy Sport deliberately brought them together.
“When I created the Happy Sport in 1993, it was a bold gesture, almost provocative,” Scheufele recalls. “Combining steel and diamonds went against all conventions.”
More than three decades later, Chopard has returned to that first design with Happy Sport The First, a new collection inspired directly by the 1993 watch. Available in 26 mm and 33 mm sizes, it retains the moving diamonds that defined the original while refining the proportions for today.
Five diamonds move across the 26 mm models and seven across the 33 mm versions, suspended between two layers of anti-reflective sapphire crystal. The silver-toned, finely grained dial is finished with midnight-blue Roman numerals, a railway minute track and blued sword-shaped hands.
One of the most distinctive returning elements is the pebble-link bracelet, originally inspired by stones polished smooth by the sea. Redesigned and produced in-house, its rounded links are intended to sit fluidly against the wrist.
The watches are offered in Lucent Steel, two-tone Lucent Steel and ethical yellow gold, or entirely in ethical yellow gold. Chopard says its proprietary steel currently has an 80 per cent recycling rate, while the Maison has used 100 per cent ethical gold for its watches and jewellery since 2018.
It is a fitting way to mark 50 years of Happy Diamonds. The design may have been born in the 1970s, but its defining idea — jewellery that moves with the person wearing it — feels particularly at home now.
For Chopard, the anniversary is less about looking backwards than putting its most recognisable signatures back into motion.
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