PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHARRIOL

Coralie Charriol, vice president and creative director of Charriol, gives us a glimpse of the creative process behind luxury timepieces and what makes them tick.

Early this October, Swiss luxury timepiece and jewelry brand Charriol launched its latest collection, ‘Forever’, featuring watches embellished with a diamond-patterned lattice motif around the case and bangles with twisted steel cables in PVD coating. In Indonesia, the products are distributed by Jamasia Infinite Luxury.

The family business was founded by Philippe Charriol in 1983 and mainly catered to mature women aged 50 and up, who constituted 80 percent of the company’s market segment. One of the brand’s most well-known collections is Saint Tropez, a watch product line for women launched in 1986.

Working as the brand’s vice president and creative director is Coralie Charriol, Philippe’s daughter. Based in New York and Geneva for the past 10 years, she has designed 15 jewelry lines and 10 collections of leather goods for Charriol. She also plays an important role in the development of the watches.

J+ recently sat down with her to understand the nuts and bolts of watchmaking (including snippets of conversation about jewelry too) during her visit to Jakarta to promote the Forever line. Here are excerpts from the interview, edited for clarity and length.

Can you describe your creative process?

Well, the process is kind of boring, as is the case in any manufacturing process. However, there are two bookends to the process, the most exciting elements: the exciting day when an idea comes to you and the moment when you see the product get sold in stores, when somebody actually wants it and buys it. But, in the middle, it is a headache (laughs).

Talking about ideas, where did you get the inspiration for this latest collection?

Actually this one is inspired by a song called “Forever Young” by Rod Stewart. I like it a lot. When I listen to it, I kind of go, ‘yeah, of course I want to be forever young!’ So that is the feeling I want to give people with my designs.

I’m influenced by music, by song lyrics or melodies that make me feel good. For instance, when I listened to Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love”, that was one of the things that precipitated the creation of Malia, our Valentine’s Day collection we launched a while ago.

The song then made me think of Malia, a Hawaiian name, because I was born there. Hawaii is a place where people feel free, because you just think of vacations, fun and piña coladas whenever the name comes up.

You said that you and your father raced cars. I’m intrigued; did that also inspire your watchmaking?

Actually, I only did it for a year 15 years ago and haven’t done it again since. My father still does and he started years ago at the age of 50. I guess the activity taught me about fearlessness, the idea of ‘I can do it’.

How do you develop a product line?

Twice a year, we hold a meeting among sales staff and executives to assess which of our products sell and which ones don’t. We also talk about trends with our in-house designers. We choose to evolve products that sell instead of creating new products. We will add new variations on existing products to give people choices. For instance, we update our Saint Tropez line every couple of years. First we modify the dials and then the sizes.

What are the most current trends in luxury timepieces and jewelry right now?

Right now, you see colors everywhere. Thanks to advanced technology, you can impose any color on cable to make jewelry or watches. Although colors are attractive, at the end of the day, gold, steel and rose gold will always remain timeless, because you can wear them with any outfit. Right now people also like to combine different things; they like to be eclectic in order to capture the complexities and complications of their personalities for the whole world, because now personal imagery is very important.

What about digital watches?

It’s hard to fight with digital, because they spend millions of dollars on advertising. We, however, will not go digital. Nor will we insert digital elements into our watches. Our strength lies with jewelry, or watches with jewelry. The next generation might not need wristwatches anymore. People, however, might still want to buy these wristwatches as a status symbol or to celebrate a professional achievement.

Are there any challenges in running a creative family business?

Challenges can come from the creative side. If you have only one family member who’s creative, that’s good; you can just appoint that person to be the creative head. When everybody in your family is creative, however, that can spell trouble because you will start to lose direction with competing ideas. When that’s the case for you, it’s best to hire an outsider creative head to make sure that nobody’s fighting and that everybody goes with one vision.

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