At Chanel’s Watch Manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a jeweller spent nearly 100 hours setting 461 diamonds using a novel technique on a white gold queen slightly taller than a finger. It took two to three times longer than usual, partly because there wasn’t a previous example to guide the process.
The technique is known as the tweed setting, and Chanel has filed a patent application. It builds on the snow setting, where diamonds of varying diameters are set side by side, each held by gold grains. The tweed setting goes a step further: grains are flattened vertically on one diamond and horizontally on the next, so the stones sit at the knot points of what resembles woven fabric.
Mademoiselle Chanel is the white gold queen on the Coco Game Chessboard, and she is also the queen facing her across the board, sculpted from blackened gold. This unique creation is the striking centrepiece of the 14-piece haute horlogerie capsule unveiled at Watches & Wonders in April.
Arnaud Chastaingt’s Watch Creation Studio began designing the chessboard nearly three years ago. The details are dazzling—32 pieces, 9,236 brilliant-cut diamonds, and an obsidian board flanked by 15.48ct of diamonds. The stones also total 111ct, but these jaw-dropping numbers hardly convey the complexity of the entire creation.
A significant challenge was the transformation of highly resistant ceramic into art forms since shrinkage varies unevenly with the temperature in the kiln. As an example, the black king, a ceramic lion representing Chanel’s heraldic motif on its fine watches, required uncompromising precision. Creating the statuesque and regal animal demanded 600 trials and 1,200 hours of material research. Each ceramic piece also required roughly 20 hours of machining on a 5-axis lathe.
As for the white gold pieces, they were crafted using lost wax casting, an ancient technique where a wax model in a mould is melted away to make room for molten gold. In addition, each queen’s slingback shoes rest on a pedestal with a small dial beneath it. When off the board, they hang from diamond-and-onyx chains stored in an obsidian box.
Mademoiselle is present throughout the capsule. One piece has her perched on the dial in white gold relief; another shows her swivelling to reveal the time. On a matte black J12, she appears as a pixelated figurine laser-cut from carbon, moving across the dial as the seconds hand. The tweed setting reappears more prominently in the Gabrielle Watch (limited to 10 pieces) and the Gabrielle Long Necklace (five).
While Chanel has previously rendered tweed in gold and diamonds—as seen in the Tweed de Chanel high jewellery collections (2020 and 2023) with gold threads and stones mimicking woven fabric—this iteration embeds the weave directly into the surface of each diamond’s mounting.
For these two pieces, the studio spent over 200 hours replicating the Mademoiselle in 3D from archival photographs—a resolution it could not achieve with traditional sculpture—before casting her in white gold across 10 moulds and hand-assembling the six parts without screws. In the Gabrielle Watch, there are 651 diamonds. Of these, 461 are set into her suit, following the same tweed pattern worn by the chess queen.
In the J12 X-Ray Coco Game, Mademoiselle disappears completely. Ceramic and gold give way to sapphire crystal, machined for 1,600 hours to achieve optical clarity. The hand-wound calibre 3.1, with its plate and bridges also cut from sapphire crystal, takes a week to assemble. Baguette diamonds line the bezel and bracelet continuously, while a 65-facet diamond rotates steadily on the flying tourbillon.
The matte black J12 Coco Game features her as a pixelated laser-cut carbon plate figure. She stands 11.5mm tall and weighs only 0.025g, so lightweight that any additional weight would disrupt the seconds hand’s balance, and if she were less rigid, she would bend at speed. She circles the dial every minute, connected by a nearly invisible, shock-resistant mechanism developed over 10 months. Her face and attire are layered with greyscale decals applied at the pixel level.
On the matching J12 Coco Game Charms watch, the same character is suspended from the crown like a lucky talisman. Taking four months to complete, the Coco Game Long Necklace renders the same pixelated figure in diamonds, now 50mm tall. Made of titanium, white gold and diamonds, she hangs from a chain of diamonds and black-lacquered white gold cylinders.
The Premiere Coco Game ring exemplifies Chanel’s versatility as both a watchmaker and a jeweller. It can be flipped to showcase two different faces: one side has a 0.90-ct baguette diamond beneath the sapphire crystal and a diamond-encrusted gold plate; on the other, the Premiere watch’s octagonal dial is embellished with diamonds and bordered by a blackened gold ribbon. There are also 434 brilliant-cut diamonds on the ring’s body. Depending on how it is worn, it is both a watch and a piece of jewellery.
Besides the haute horlogerie models, the collection includes five more accessible references: the J12 Coco Game in glossy white and matte black, the Boy.Friend Coco Game, the Code Coco Game, and the Premiere Coco Game. Mademoiselle has long been a legend, immortalised as a name on a bottle, a black-and-white profile. Now, as a chess queen, animated character, and pendant, she is a treasured game piece, with each version showcasing a unique aspect of her legacy.
