Vanguart’s interstellar Black Hole and brand new Orb show the watch world just how you make a meteoric impact, from left field, out of the blue
Going into 2020, the timing probably wasn’t what you’d call ideal for launching a high-concept wristwatch brand. The finer points of any fine timepiece are impossible to convey to clients by
Zoom, even if they have remembered to turn off ‘mute’. But as the founding chairman of Vanguart – an ‘artistic’ approach at the ‘vanguard’ of contemporary horology – attests, it was
a blessing in disguise.
“We had two years to prove its precision and reliability,” Mehmet Koruturk says, “on wrists, every day and in the real world. (“Well, whenever you could venture into the real world,” he adds wryly.)
There was never any real doubt, as the provenance of Koruturk’s nimble-fingered, polymath co-founders doesn’t come much more golden. Axel Leuenberger and Jérémy Freléchox both hail from Audemars Piguet’s Renaud & Papi: the bleeding-edge hothouse for 21st-century horological soup-ups since the 90s (Richard Mille’s original one-stop shop, say no more). Concomitantly, it’s a hothouse for precocious talent and elite splinter brands such as Greubel Forsey with their €200k-plus flea circuses for the wrist.
Vanguart’s opening salvo of 2019 – or a sleeper hit of 2022, however you choose to see it – was the Black Hole, just two years in development. That COVID-enforced testbed certainly guaranteed wearability, since its ‘fuselage’ as the brand likes to say, rides your wrist imperceptibly, helped by an instantly switchable, flowing rubber strap.
The eponymous vortex-like dial architecture – with a planetary body spinning above its apex in the form of a flying tourbillon carriage – isn’t just an aesthetic pun. One of what looks like two rocket boosters on the right is what Vanguart calls a ‘joystick’.
And like a black hole, it genuinely distorts time: you can select between normal, reading digitally across three numerals at 9 o’clock, its concentric numeral rings flicking clockwise every passing minute; or you can switch it to a countdown, with time running backwards.
Things are now pared back for 2024, with a seemingly conventional three-hander (though still with that mesmeric saucer flying centre stage). But further inspection of the Orb reveals a diamond ‘dot’ on the circumference, orbiting back and forth. It’s the only sign of another feat in circular gymnastics from Vanguart, who’ve managed to engineer the winding rotor dial-side, rather than in its usual position riding the movement’s baseplate: a concave titanium ring spinning perfectly flush between titanium bezel and dial.
This article is taken from 10:10 issue 10, included with Port issue 34. To continue reading, order your copy or subscribe here.
