This week in Dubai, Chopard ambassador Bella Hadid, face of the global “Sculpted by Light”, campaign, revealed new Ice Cube creations.

The first, this new secret watch, resembles a cascade of cubes which, dipped in gold and diamonds, would have naturally crystallized to form a supple, glamorous cuff, as comfortable as a second skin.

The second, a re-edition of the iconic Ice Cube watch launched in 1999: composed of ingeniously assembled Asscher-cut diamonds, the dial and bezel of this iconic watch from the late 20^th century perfectly recall the geometric lines of small ice cubes.

Behind the design: Coralie, the Designer Artisan who works in the jewelry department at Chopard.

The collection features a wide range of pieces: creoles, earrings, pendants and rings, set or not with diamonds. Four extraordinary pieces, fashioned by the Haute Joaillerie workshops, have been added to the ensemble: a choker necklace, a cuff bracelet, a unique secret watch and, finally, a faithful re-edition of the first watch model.

In the late 1990s, Chopard launched the Ice Cube watch, and its audacious design, underpinned by craftsmanship prowess, made waves in the world of horology. The Ice Cube watch not only marked a significant turning point in Chopard’s aesthetic journey but also redefined the concept of jewellery watches with its stylistic boldness and fresh approach. Now, this iconic creation with its timeless appearance is making a comeback.

Composed of ingeniously assembled Asscher-cut diamonds, the dial and bezel of this iconic watch perfectly echo ice cubes’ geometric lines. It was a simple, brand-new design idea that required Chopard’s expert artisans to push the boundaries of diamond-setting techniques. For the first time, it was as if the material dictated the form, as the design seemed to emanate naturally from the diamonds themselves, lending the watch its signature structured and frosted elegance. The name was not even a matter of discussion: Ice Cube was the only obvious choice.

The Ice Cube watch expanded Chopard’s creative horizons, enriching the Maison’s visual vocabulary beyond the soft curves of its earlier creations such as Happy Diamonds. The watch’s success also paved the way for a jewellery collection that remains one of the Maison’s most beloved.

Nearly 30 years later, the original Ice Cube watch remains as modern and fresh as when it was first introduced. This new edition is a celebration of the original creation, featuring an all-diamond bezel, a dial with vivid blued hands that stand out strikingly against the icy background, along with an elegant alligator leather strap.

The case of the new version of the Ice Cube watch is a replica of the original model now displayed at the Chopard Museum in Geneva. It features a 25-millimetre cube case completely paved with Asscher-cut diamonds and retains the crystalline, frosty beauty that made the original model so special and sought-after. Every facet of the design highlights the cube’s geometric purity, with diamonds placed in such a way as to echo the cubic pattern.

Caroline Scheufele, Chopard’s Co-President and Artistic Director, personally oversaw the new re-edition to ensure the original design remained authentic. An important update, however, was introduced: ethical gold, which aligns with Chopard’s Journey to Sustainable Luxury – since 2018, Chopard uses 100% ethical gold for the production of its watch and jewellery creations.

“The Ice Cube watch has long embodied Chopard’s bold attitude, defying preconceived notions of design with its new geometric precision and modern elegance. We decided to bring it back today to recognise and celebrate its timeless freshness and innovative spirit. This re-edition in ethical gold is the ideal balance of innovation and tradition.”, says Caroline Scheufele.

Technical details

• Watch in ethical 18-carat white featuring a square-shaped case (25x25 mm)
  
• Entirely set with Asscher-cut diamonds (10.80 cts)
  
• Ethical 18-carat white gold dial entirely set with Asscher-cut diamonds (2.71 cts)
  
• Blued hands
  
• Seamless black alligator leather strap with beige calfskin lining and diamond-set ethical 18-carat white gold buckle
  
• Quartz movement. 
  
• Ref. 136691-1001

Almost 30 years after the first Ice Cube watch, the collection welcomes a secret watch perfectly summing up its transformations over time and Chopard’s unmatched expertise in watchmaking and jewellery techniques. Breaking away from the repetition of identical cubes typical of previous creations, Chopard’s workshops, for the first time, introduce cubes of varied sizes and heights that nonetheless retain the sharp, sleek edges that are the signature of the collection. This subtle new creation takes the visual expression of the collection to new heights by lending the design a sense of harmonious randomness that creates a compelling visual dynamism.

The Ice Cube secret watch is not just a beautiful piece of jewellery to behold but also a technological marvel. The cubes are meticulously screwed onto a frame that is assembled in a puzzle-like fashion to ensure the flowing articulation of the bracelet, the soft feel on the skin and the abundance of shimmering reflections.

The watch is adorned with 36 princess-cut diamonds totalling 8.54 carats, adding brilliance. Known for its luminosity, the princess-cut offers the elegance of a square shape with the unique light of a brilliant-cut diamond.

The Ice Cube secret watch is a remarkable technical achievement that required 800 hours of rigorous work. The timepiece was entirely handcrafted in Chopard’s workshops through a process that began with a three-dimensional wax model to perfect the proportions, followed by a silver model to test the flexibility of the bracelet’s articulated mechanism.

Each of the 102 cubes – representing a total of 1,300 crafted facets – is individually polished three times, moving from a coarse grain to a finer grain and finally using paper paste to achieve an extraordinary sheen that gives the watch a radiant finish.

“Once again, I’m amazed by the ingenuity of our workshop, which continuously turns my most ambitious ideas into reality. I envisioned a bold, oversized cuff made entirely of golden ice cubes, but with one essential requirement: it had to be supple, because to me, comfort is the ultimate luxury. Our expert Artisans embraced the challenge, creating not only a striking piece of jewellery but also discreetly incorporating a miniature watch within”, comments Caroline Scheufele, Chopard’s Co-President and Artistic Director.

The Ice Cube collection evokes an urban landscape. The inspiration for this design came from Coralie, the Designer Artisan who has been working in Chopard’s jewellery department since 2019. Coralie once dreamed of being an architect and has designed three-dimensional jewellery requiring immense expertise on the part of the workshops.

The latest Ice Cube jewellery is an evolution of the original collection launched in 1999. While being more contemporary and with a more powerful presence, it retains the original size of the gold cubes that have made Ice Cube such a success. The collection is available in a wide variety of expressions: hoops, earrings, pendants and rings, with or without diamonds. Four extraordinary creations crafted by the Haute Joaillerie workshops have now been added to the range: a choker, a cuff bracelet, a unique secret watch and a faithful re-edition of the first watch model.

The Artisan behind this precious renaissance is Coralie, who exercises her skills in Chopard’s jewellery department. It was she who patiently reinvented the collection to find what she deemed to be the perfect shape. Her path seems predestined to have crossed that of Chopard.

“I studied science and would have liked to have become an architect”, Coralie reveals. Having demonstrated a skill for drawing, she studied for a year at the École des Beaux-Arts in Valenciennes, France, before entering the Institut Supérieur de Design Rubika, where she remained for five years. It was there that she learned about industrial design, putting her talent to work on something more concrete. “We had to do an internship every year and I did mine in the accessories department of a luxury Maison, where I discovered a fascinating world. Upon graduating, I worked for a watchmaker for four years, followed by a year and a half with a perfumer, where I designed precious fragrance bottles. However, even though the approach was very luxurious, a perfume is still a consumer product, whereas a piece of jewellery conveys a hint of eternity and I missed that.”

The stars aligned when Coralie answered an advertisement for a job in Chopard’s jewellery department. “I liked the idea of being able to work for a family-run Maison and notably for Chopard, because it offers a wide range of skills. I was convinced that I would never be bored there. I was finally hired as a watch designer to sketch the future ladies’ creations and I’ve been working here for five years now. As a designer, you enjoy the great privilege of being in direct contact with the Scheufele family. We are listened to in a way that I’ve never experienced before.”

Ice Cube is an iconic Chopard collection of which the first watch was created in 1999. Entirely set with diamonds and fitted with a satin strap, it was reissued in 2024. A very special form of gemsetting was used to create this timepiece, involving very little metal. It gave the impression that the diamonds were held together by magic. “Some of the techniques used to create this watch can be found in the current jewellery collection, in particular the diamond setting adorning the cubes’ different facets. Each cube was manufactured and then diamond-polished, i.e. polished with a rough diamond, then reworked and assembled entirely by hand”, explains Coralie. The result is gold cubes that catch the light from all sides without needing to be diamond-set to shine. Yet beauty doesn’t happen by chance. “The facets have a particular angle that catches the light.”

The most complicated job in a designer’s life is when they are asked to oversee the evolution of an iconic piece of jewellery such as Ice Cube. It has a history and well-defined aesthetic codes. The idea was to update it, to redesign it in tune with the times, while preserving its identity. “In designing the current Ice Cube collection, we didn’t want to change the size of the cubes, nor touch the icon”, says Coralie. “The original proportions were perfect and have thus been retained. We have, however, imparted a sense of rhythm such as by adding elements or creating empty spaces, for example. On some models, we added a central gadroon to give the ring a slightly bolder look and make it more imposing, while maintaining its pure lines. This gadroon has been diamond-coated in the same way as the cubes: it is bevelled on the sides to catch the light. We have updated this collection according to the needs and desires of future customers. It was also a way of winning over a male audience, as this new collection is unisex”, explains this Designer Artisan.

Coralie’s talent lay in successfully reproducing the original design and applying it to a wide range of creations, from a small earring to a secret watch from the Haute Joaillerie workshops. Ice Cube comes in different variations, some of which are especially precious: a choker, a cuff bracelet and a secret watch.

To create these exceptional items of jewellery, Coralie came up with the idea of replicating a skyline using cubes of varying heights. “The Ice Cube collection lent itself to an architectural shape. We chose to place it in a very urban context.” The secret watch was made by a single artisan and took him five and a half months to complete. He shaped each cube by hand, arranged and assembled them individually on the basis of the design created by Coralie. “For the cuff bracelet and choker, we chose to play with the height of the original cubes, while for the watch, we modified their actual size.”

To create this work of art, Coralie worked with large-scale Lego blocks that she had fun positioning in such a way as to create an urban landscape. “There are three different heights of cube on the cuff bracelet and on the choker, all arranged in a harmonious manner”, Coralie emphasises. “This difference in level allows the light to reflect in a different way. As Chopard’s signature is diamonds, the Scheufele family wanted some of the cubes to be gemset in an apparently random yet perfectly controlled manner. We enhanced the volumes with brilliant-cut diamonds adding little touches of light.”

When looking at these treasures, holding them and discovering the extraordinary suppleness that makes them seem like a ribbon of gold, one cannot imagine the complexity behind their assembly. “The base of the construction is formed by cubes that are all the same height and are joined together by four small rings fixed to the four corners”, Coralie explains. “This mesh gives the piece its flowing look and feel. We have also screwed a cap on each cube to give it height and hide the rings. We created three different cap heights to create that skyline effect.” The clasps are fully integrated and concealed, the overall effect being one of great purity. “It’s a team effort”, says the designer. “These pieces stem from collaboration with the technical developers, the polisher and the gemsetter. It’s a challenge we took on together.”

It should be emphasised that the Ice Cube collection is made from ethical gold and was chosen in 2017 back in 2017 to be the first Chopard jewellery collection entirely made from this material. This was a founding gesture: since then, the Maison has extended the use of ethical gold to all its gold watch and jewellery creations. “This point is very important to me”, says Coralie. “The collection must appeal to future generations, who are very sensitive to environmental and social issues. Ice Cube conveys this message and I’m proud to be able to work on this collection.”

Chopard’s new campaign celebrates the purity, appeal and contemporary character of Ice Cube jewellery. Shot by British fashion photographer and director Charlotte Wales, it reveals a captivating fusion between Bella Hadid’s beauty and the sunny radiance of Ice Cube jewellery. The skilful use of light creates a mesmerising atmosphere, while accentuating the perfect geometry of these creations. This symbiosis of light and jewellery reveals the very essence of Ice Cube design.

Adorned with Chopard’s flamboyant cubes, Bella Hadid is surrounded by an abstract urban scene set against the backdrop of a night skyline infinitely repeated in a play of mirrors, in which lit-up windows in buildings echo Ice Cube’s brilliance. Night reveals the incandescence of the jewellery in a fascinating juxtaposition of two icons. Without shadow, there is no light: such is the common thread running through the images in this ‘Sculpted by Light’ campaign.

As the collection’s central motif, the cube embodies an idea of geometric perfection and magnifies the light bouncing off its facets. Chopard’s Co-President and Artistic Director Caroline Scheufele introduced this motif in 1999 through a watch that ditched flashy artifice to focus instead on pure shapes. Ever since, the collection has continued to evolve in a perpetual dialogue with light.

Reflecting the Bauhaus movement’s principles emphasising simplicity and functionality, this minimalist, uncluttered aesthetic is characterised by highly graphic lines using only essential elements: light, shape and resistant materials. Ice Cube meets the minimalist inspiration of modern architecture through its vertical nature evoking the skyscrapers of international capitals that are natural homes to the avant-garde. These streamlined, geometric designs are showcased in the new ‘Sculpted by Light’ visuals. Minimalism is expressed as an art of living that involves choosing to safeguard essentials, meaning all that is precious and enduring rather than ephemeral. Ice Cube jewellery embodies this desire to focus on that which is simple, pure, beautiful and lasting.

Ice Cube stems from a quest for perfection combining high technology and craftsmanship. While each cube with its identically repeated motif may appear simple, each of its four perfectly symmetrical edges is in fact subtly facetted. As a result, light finds a wealth of refraction points in these tiny surfaces, multiplying the jewellery’s brilliance. Highly technical machining resulting from six years of R&D has enabled perfect milling that creates taut lines on minute surfaces. This constantly optimised, diamond-equipped tool machines the precious metal to the nearest hundredth of a centimetre, producing a pre-polished surface of exceptional quality. The mirror-polished surface is further buffed with a dedicated pad to endow it with ultimate shine and brilliance: this phase is done exclusively by hand, as is the diamond paving on the gemset sections.

Firmly committed to an ethical approach blending seamlessly with its identity, Chopard favours essential and enduring creations. As early as 2017, the use of ethical gold to produce the jewellery in the collection testified to the Maison’s commitment to responsible practices. While Chopard made ethical gold the norm for all its watch and jewellery creations the following year, the fact that it used Ice Cube to spearhead its sustainable endeavours demonstrates its attachment to a collection that is part of a contemporary approach in which materials are every bit as important as product design.