Luckily for the Oscar ceremony servicing professions, such as jewelers and paparazzi, the U.S. screenwriters’ strike does not shadow the celebration any more, allowing a tribute to diamonds and fashion on the red carpet, the IDEXOnline portal wrote on the eve of this event. Within the frames of a week-long series of “A Diamond Is Forever” parties at Chateau Marmont, there were shown evening dress collections made by Rodarte, 3.1 Philip Lim, Joyovich-Hawk, Alabama Chanin and Livertine specially tailored for this ceremony and combined with exclusive jewelry pieces from Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Camilla Dietz Bergeron, Munnu/The Gem Palace and Neil Lane, respectively.
Simultaneously, a contingent of Canadian designers, including jewelry designer Rachel Mielke of Hillberg & Berk, was invited to set out their wares in the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Mielke commented to the Canadian “Leader-Post” that she would be showing her exclusive collection over the weekend, in the hopes that a celebrity will pick one of her designs to wear and that would be an excellent advertising stunt.
Last month, Chopard was an unconditional leader in stars-related activities. The company owners admit that for many years they were betting right against star clients.
According to the U.S. “Time” magazine, ten years ago it dawned upon the company’s co-president and design director Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele to issue a great number of jewelry pieces belonging to the upper price segment. Especially such pieces, whose exclusivity would be ideally appealing to the eye on photographs and videos, shot at events where stars were posing on the red carpet. She signed on as the official sponsor of the Cannes Film Festival and started smothering celebrities like Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Hurley and Charlize Theron in Chopard’s jewels. One thing led to another, and demand for “statement” pieces grew along with Chopard’s collection.
Last year, to reinforce the image of a stars jeweler the company prepared a special collection commemorating its tenth anniversary of collaboration with movie stars posing on the Cannes stairway.
In the U.S.A., the company is closely cooperating with Grammy and Oscar nominees. The exhibition of jewelry, which sparkled on Oscar female winners in the course of last five years, was to remind this. All these jewelry pieces were displayed at Chopard’s international flagship store in Madison Avenue on March 7 – 14.
Marion Cotillard, Helen Mirren, Rachel Weisz, Hilary Swank, and Charlize Theron all wore Chopard jewelry when they were recognized as the best actresses.
Incidentally, the opening of this store in November, the first in the U.S.A. and the 100th in the world, was marked by the presence of such movie stars as Elisabeth Hurley and Adrien Brody. However, the main guest at the party was Elton John. It is worth reminding that he is closely working with Chopard, which is active in charitable auctions to support Elton John AIDS Fund.
This year, after the Oscar ceremony Elton John AIDS Fund sponsored by Chopard launched its traditional post-Oscars party at Hollywood, where Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele did not miss the occasion to appear wearing jewelry from the 709 Madison Collection designed specially for the New York store.
Intending to win America, the Leviev Company acted likewise. As National Jeweler reports, from 2006, Celine Assimon, Marketing and Communications Director of Leviev, was responsible for marketing development, events and overall communications.
She worked on the openings of Leviev’s stores in London, New York and Moscow.
She also dressed Hollywood stars in diamonds, including Drew Barrymore, Salma Hayek, Jennifer Hudson, Susan Sarandon and Brooke Shields.
Assimon oversaw the creation of the Leviev advertising campaign and the production of a catalogue shot by renowned photographer Stefano Galuzzi and featuring the Duchess of Calthorpe and her daughter, Gabriella.
However, in the beginning of March Celine Assimon resigned from the company. It is reported that she recently became engaged to the Consul of Italy in Brussels and is moving to Belgium. Assimon plans to continue her career in the jewelry industry in Europe but has no specific plans at this time. Nothing is known so far about her successor in the company.
Staking on stars does not prove always successful since they are often “pulling the blanket over to their side” and “stealing” events from their organizers. Sharon Stone waging an intransigent war against the PETA opponents of the fur industry is a good example. Sharon’s presence “blurred” the impression from the charitable party sloganed “A Diamond is Forever” and organized in the run up for the Oscar events by the Diamond Information Center. There was a row in Internet tabloids also triggered by her appearance at the post-Oscars party given by Chopard and Elton John, where she posed wearing a broach made from a rat’s foot. Some of the jewelry mass media covering the event preferred to pretend as if Stone “were not there” at all.
