Wear your heart all over
Coralie Charriol is a self-described “huge romantic.” The chairwoman and CEO of Charriol loves Bridgerton and rom-coms. She adores love poetry so much she recently held a giveaway on the Charriol Instagram account, gifting the follower who posted the best love poem.
“I am a big fan of a cute little poem or cute little love note under a pillow or taped to the mirror,” she admits. “You can even take your lipstick and write on the mirror.”
Every year Coralie designs a collection for Valentine’s Day, and this year her “Love” collection is full of heart the kind you can wear on your wrists, ears, and neck.
“The heart is one of the most recognized symbols all over the world,” she notes. “It’s the shape that every single country recognizes, so it’s universal.
We caught up with Coralie over Zoom last week, and it’s been a busy and productive year for the Charriol CEO, even during quarantine. After 20 years of living in New York she’s now based in Geneva, where she’s closer to the factory that makes Charriol watches in the middle of Switzerland.
“I love to say ‘surrounded by cows,’ because you get there and it’s pastures and pastures and cows, and then you have the factories that make all the Swiss watches,” she laughs.
The New York Film Academy graduate managed to shoot a new ad campaign for Charriol in Paris with two French models flaunting the company’s latest collection of bags, belts, watches and jewelry.
“For me, the spirit of Charriol is always fun, energetic, dynamic,” Coralie says.
This season the highlight is the Celtic Legacy, a classic, Swiss-made watch sporting the cable bracelet that is Charriol’s trademark. The his-and-hers watches are suitable for V-Day gifting and are Coralie’s homage to her father, Charriol’s late founder Philippe Charriol.
“My dad launched the brand in 1983 when I was a bambino, and he came up with this watch called the Celtic,” she recalls. “After his passing, we decided to go back in the archives and redesign one of his bestsellers at the very beginning of Charriol.”
An avid surfer who got into the sport after the birth of her second child, Coralie’s love for the ocean informs all of her initiatives at Charriol. Her friend, Hollywood actor Adrian Grenier, inspired her to join his ocean-conservation foundation Lonely Whale, and she executive-produced The Story of Plastic, a documentary exposing the single-use plastics that have been clogging our oceans. (Part of the docu is even set in the Philippines and she premiered the film in Manila in 2019.)
“I said, why not bring my passion about the environment — about the ocean — into the Charriol collection?” So two years ago Charriol put a sea turtle on a special watch dial, followed by an elephant (Coralie’s favorite animal), and this year, they’re coming out with a polar bear dial and ocean-themed bangles, as well as Forever bangles you can customize with names or words (hers are “Restart,” “Innovate” and “Balance”).
Charriol is also rolling out the plastic-free packaging and boxes Coralie promised in 2019: “Those are Charriol’s expression of us supporting the preservation of the ocean and our environment.”
