Chopard

2004

The cosmopolitan Olympic games of a celebrated House!

In 2004, Caroline Scheufele, president and artistic director of Chopard, was on Mykonos for just a few hours with her father to oversee preparations for the House’s outlet. Caroline later made her official appearance on Mykonos in June 2009 at a dinner at Matsuhisa, which was organised by Chopard for 60 guests, including Melissanidis and other prominent businessmen. That night she fell in love with the island! The next evening they took her to Nammos and she immediately thought about throwing a party. Naturally, for the large number of guests she wanted to invite, it couldn’t be organised for at least 20 days. And that’s what happened.

The best parties were during the week and the invitees were usually around 500. Many celebrities came to this particular party, including as official guest the Russian supermodel Irina Shayk, girlfriend of Cristiano Ronaldo. The hostess appeared in an animal print jumpsuit and danced until the early hours with the group and dancers that Chopard takes everywhere. The entire space had been turned into an enormous deck with very expensive jewellery on display, which explained the tight security.

I had the great pleasure to meet Caroline along with Giuseppe Zanotti in Paris and I liked her immediately. I could never understand how it was possible for her to work so hard and yet have such boundless energy, to be at ease wherever she went, to have such strength while remaining so affable. When I asked her then how she found time to holiday, she replied “It is very difficult for someone to be president of such a company and at the same time remain open to stimuli but I make every possible effort to find free time, first of all because I really want to travel. Whenever I travel, my mind opens, I feel inspired, I see things from a different perspective, I experience different cultures and I can do everything. There are so many stimuli all over the planet. But more than anything else in summer I love being by the sea in Greece and especially Mykonos. It creates a sense of freedom, of sailing on a boat and not thinking about anything. I am open to many stimuli when I am outside the office. In fact, being in such a position is among my priorities, even though I know I will have to rush around after to do everything that needs to be done.” And when I asked her what she had learned from so much work, she said “My work has taught me that creation elevates a good product to a level where it cannot be compared to others and my life has taught me to think positively at all times. This is my motto and I stick to it. I have many dreams in this life but I am very superstitious and I never disclose them until I see that they are being fulfilled. Even so, the last thing I do at night before sleeping is pray, saying “thank you for today”. The ‘here and now’ is the most precious thing we have. And I learned that here!

Ps : The text is a part of the central article in Mykonos confidential magazine in which mrs Ada Iliopoulou wrote her experiences from Mykonos about the last 30 years