Moments as Colorful and Bright as a Diamond Watch
Watches tell time, but naturally colored diamond watches enchant time. What could be happier than seeing every minute through the prism of nature’s brightest pinks, yellows, and blues? Beyond the sensational headlines touting their price tags, these rare and even unique watches are tributes to the opulence of nature. Billions of years ago, in the depths of darkness, the earth prepared this explosion of color — a joyful message to the people of the future.
Swiss-Made Extroversion
For watch designers, colored diamonds offer creative inspiration and spark the imagination. For diamond cutters, however, their hardness, especially pink diamonds, present practical challenges. Each colored diamond watch is an artisanal miracle, birthed by a team of extremely skilled specialists. It takes a village, as they say.
It also takes a spirit. The exuberance of colored diamonds permeates the very soul of the brands who work with them. Colorful Chopard diamond watches, for example, show off their extroverted personality. The inventor of the iconic Happy Diamonds collection, in which diamonds are given the freedom to dance, exudes a joie de vivre that has become their signature.
Watchmaking is, of course, in the Chopard’s DNA. Since the house’s first watches for the likes of Tsar Nicholas II, each Chopard timepiece is an exemplar of Swiss technical perfection. Moreover, under the creative direction of Caroline Sheufele, the watchmaker has become an international jewelry powerhouse as well. In 2000, the brand announced its dual passions for watches and natural diamonds with the monumental 201 Carat, which sold for $25 million. Named after the carat weight of its 874 colored diamonds, the watch features diamonds all of shapes and sizes including a 15-carat pink diamond and an 11-carat blue diamond.
Exuberant Diamond Watches and Classical Designs
At this level of sophistication, function is a given, though probably not the goal. Even the notion of marketing such an extraordinary commodity is somewhat irrelevant. The $55-million Graff Diamonds Hallucination watch may be out of reach, but no one can buy the Mona Lisa either. The sculptural masterpiece is covered in a rainbow of 110 carats of extremely rare colored diamonds. As if to make a playful joke about the construct of time, her younger sibling, the 89.83-carat Multi-coloured Diamond Secret Watch, has the tiniest pink diamond pavé dial, visible only when its lid is lifted.
Graff’s monochromatic watches are just as exuberant. The 18k yellow gold Fancy Vivid Yellow Diamond Watch has 211 diamonds weighing 59.25 carats, an impressive feat since yellow diamonds of this hue are quite rare. Also striking is how simple, discreet designs seem to bring out the most in colored diamonds.
Graff is a renowned gemstone collector, and is one of the few jewelers with access to the some of the greatest eccentricities in terms of diamonds. Working with their in-house diamond cutters, the result is always exceptional diamond jewelry, always stretching beyond pure beauty. After all, what’s at stake is a hopeful vision of timelessness — the ultimate mission of a watch.
