Twenty-five: the freshness of youth without its frivolity, a newfound maturity and a more settled sense of identity. The Happy Sport collection celebrates its 25th birthday this year, and it has grown into a fine young woman, with all the values you would expect. Since 1993, freedom has been its watchword: the freedom of diamonds that have thrown off the shackles of a setting, at liberty to move around with the movements of the wrist, between two invisible sheets of sapphire glass. There is also the adventurousness of the bold pairing of steel and diamonds (an initiative of Caroline Scheufele , co-president and artistic director of Chopard), the diversity of materials, shapes and colours that we have seen over the last quarter-century, and finally the combination of luxury with a playful spirit in a watch that is relaxed enough to be worn every day.
From quartz to manufacture calibre
The Happy Sport was born with a quartz movement, which it kept until its twentieth year. 2013 marked an important new step for the collection: the step up to mechanical watchmaking. The mechanical debutante, the Happy Sport Medium Automatic 36 mm, was driven by an automatic movement with a 40-hour power reserve. This year, Chopard celebrates the silver jubilee of its sports watch for women by opening the doors to its watch manufacture, and giving the gift of a self-winding in-house mechanical movement. The Chopard 09.01-C in-house calibre, specially developed for a 30 mm women’s watch case (a size introduced to the Happy Sport collection in 2015, after the 36 mm models), governs hours, minutes and seconds, beats at a frequency of 25,200 vph and gives the watch an increased autonomy of 42 hours. The movement of the Happy Sport Manufacture, which has a big Chopard logo on the rotor to attest to its manufacture quality, is visible through the sapphire case back.
Mother-of-pearl and pastels
The Happy Sport Manufacture comes in three case materials – steel, 18K rose gold, and two-tone steel and rose gold – and three dial colours in mother-of-pearl, delicately tinted pale blue or pink, or in pure white, across which the iconic five diamonds dance. The watches are fitted with alligator straps to match their colours and materials. The steel version has a diamond-set bezel. The light blue dial features Roman numerals and rhodium-plated hour markers and hands. The two 18K rose gold versions, with optional diamond-set bezel, focus on pale elegance, with gold-plated markers around the dial. The two-tone version with its plain bezel is nevertheless uncompromisingly feminine in pale pink.
