Early this month,
Manila Bulletin Lifestyle had afternoon tea with the current CEO of the Swiss luxury marquee Charriol, Coralie Charriol Paul. The conversation took place at 4 p.m. via video chat in the Philippines, and for Coralie who was in Geneva, our meeting was an elevenses, with a time difference of seven hours.For those unfamiliar with the term,
elevenses is a short break or morning tea taken around 10 or 11. The details and the word differ depending on the country but have been widely used in pop culture from Winnie-the-Pooh to Paddington Bear to J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”
Coralie Charriol’s personalized Forever bangles
IT’S HARD to think about luxury during these times a point with which a purveyor of luxury jewelry surprisingly agrees. Asked what she has learned about luxury during lockdown, Coralie Charriol, said, “Nothing,” a point she found funny, based on her laughter. “Everybody can live without luxury.”
“We’re all in pajamas. Nobody got to travel,” she said.
Ms. Charriol, present CEO of the Charriol jewelry brand and daughter of its founder, the late Philippe Charriol, spoke to reporters from her home in Geneva earlier this month and taught us a bit about living with luxury in uncertain times.