Tag: geneva

Edgy Metal

Crisply crenelated, sculpted, polished and burnished: the sporty heft of Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas takes the venerable marque to the ends of the earth, at the cutting edge of its craft

The taut lines of the boutique-exclusive Overseas three-hander in pink gold (£58,500) progress the ’70s rakishness of the historic 222 from ballroom floors to teak decks

Heritage is a priceless commodity in luxury watchmaking, which makes Vacheron Constantin more valuable than most. The Genevese master boasts over 260 years of uninterrupted production – the longest in Switzerland – informing an unwavering consistency in handcraftsmanship, but also an aesthetic beamed from another time; something that feels slightly more ‘Latin’ than its Swiss counterparts.

It’s this firmly entrenched pedigree that means even Vacheron Constantin’s relatively racy line, the Overseas, comes bearing a cosmopolitan élan. And not just because it comes in gold as well as steel (regardless of intended sportiness) let alone £100k-plus ‘price on application’ versions fitted with a highfalutin tourbillon carousing gaily about tuxedo-blue dials.

Caliber 5200 ticks proudly through the caseback of all Overseas chronographs, gold rotor, high precision, exquisite Poinçon de Genève-certified hand-finish, the lot

If leading oxygen-eschewing alpinist photographer and National Geographic cover hero Cory Richards sees fit to collaborate on an Overseas in titanium that still looks fit for an evening at a Montenegrin casino, you know the high-horological waters run deep here.

It’s arguably down to the watchmaker’s continued foothold in the heart of Geneva itself, rather than the outlying Jura mountains, where dairy farmers started by just making components during the snowy winters, rather than whole watches. It was on an island where the city’s Rhône river opens into Lac Léman that Jean-Marc Vacheron opened his atelier in 1755. His son and grandson soon came into the business, taking their ornately decorated pocket watches into new markets before hotshot globetrotting salesman François Constantin came aboard in 1819.

Piercing panda eyes adorn the latest chronograph edition of VC’s Overseas (£34,300 in steel), a classic two-tone configuration harking from the counter arrays of classic ’60s motoring watches like the Autavia and Carrera

François’s motto, “Do better if possible and that is always possible”, first appeared in a letter he wrote to Jacques-Barthélémy Vacheron that year, and it certainly came to bear on things when Vacheron Constantin got down with the sporty luxe scene of the ’70s. It was Audemars Piguet who coined the genre in 1972, with its immortal, octagonal Royal Oak – perfectly pitched at the era’s burgeoning, disco-glitz jet set. Girard-Perregaux and Patek Philippe followed with their own luxurious takes on geometric steel, the Laureato and Nautilus respectively.

But when it came to Vacheron? The virtuoso horloger was, of course, to reinstate more of the ‘luxe’ to the ‘sport’, rendering its own player entirely in luscious gold (as well as steel, as per the genre’s disruptive wont): the slinky, silky-of-bracelet and ever-so-lounge-lizard 222, in celebration of VC’s 222nd anniversary. 20 years on, and 1996 saw a steroidal overhaul, with 222 evolving into Overseas.

Pitched as “an invitation to travel”, Overseas was now framed by a castellated, six-sided bezel, which tightened up the ‘knurled’ ring that crowned Jorg Hysek’s original 222 design (yes, it was Hysek at the drawing board, not the Royal Oak and Nautilus’s more garlanded draftsman, Gérald Genta). It cleverly riffs on the brand’s Maltese Cross logo – itself descended from the shape of a cam that coordinates the 12-month indicator for ‘perpetual’ calendars. More to the point, the bezel pumps things up from VC’s usual classical cool, while at the same time managing to instate a different form of classicism – just as a Roman temple might go for Corinthian columns over Ionic. Sure enough, its inverse Maltese angles flow seamlessly into a robust ‘integrated’ bracelet, whose central links fortify the motif.

In pink gold and royal blue dial, the Overseas Chronograph (£76,500) makes the case for arguably the most lavish iteration of a sportstimer

In 41mm’s worth of boutique-exclusive pink gold (£58,500, yes, but do remember how much metal goes into that bracelet, as well as case), with the option of chronograph functionality (£76,500) – also available in stainless-steel ‘panda eye’ format (£34,300) – the three Overseas featured here are as sporty as it gets for Vacheron Constantin. Which is another way of saying: unlike anything the rest of Switzerland could muster.

That’s what heritage buys you.

Photographer Rosie Harriet Ellis at Artworld

Lighting Director Garth McKee

Production Artworld

Watch Your Weight

With the traditional wind-up wristwatch more popular than ever, we explore how the Swiss are staying at the cutting edge with high-tech, lightweight materials science 

With speculation whirling about who will play the next James Bond, you’d be forgiven for mistaking the portrait featured here for a particularly dramatic teaser – 007’s scheming, megalomaniacal nemesis standing menacingly by his weapon of global destruction. But Senad Hasanovic is very much fact, not fiction, and he couldn’t be more self-effacing if he tried. 

The 33-year-old has been installed at Hublot’s factory on Lake Geneva for almost four years now, as, in his words, “part of the technology transfer” from Lausanne’s École Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL). He’s no mere accessory to his elaborate equipment – Hasanovic worked for two years at EPFL on Hublot’s tough commission to the school: to develop an 18-carat gold that wouldn’t scratch. Hasanovic’s resulting Magic Gold was made by fusing 24-carat gold with a porous ceramic substrate under tremendous pressure and temperature, to give a scratch resistance of 1,000 Vickers. Normal 18-carat gold is 400 Vickers, by comparison. Thus, Hublot’s Metallurgy and Materials division was born, and Hasanovic was installed in-house at the watch factory, lock, stock and barrel.

“Magic Gold offered me a great opportunity,” enthuses Hasanovic, who originally joined EPFL after completing a master’s degree, majoring in carbon fibre. “Hublot is the watchmaker for materials – we’re now doing some crazy things with red ceramics, aluminium and carbon fibre…”

“Why do we go to these lengths?” he adds. “It’s because, as a young brand, we can’t talk about heritage, so materials are the thing that differentiates us. And now we have the foundry in-house, the cool thing is that we can continue to experiment.”

A finely made timepiece is a baffling anachronism. For starters, no one really needs a watch these days, finely made or not. Second, a finely made watch is still driven by a delicate concoction of wheels, springs and levers – 200-year-old technology that keeps worse time than the placky digital that fell out of your cereal packet this morning. So what’s tying Switzerland’s lab-coated boffins to their workbenches, tweezers in hand, when they could easily be enticed down from Watch Valley by any of Geneva’s micro-tech firms?

The plasma oven at Rado’s Comadur case-making facility

What’s keeping the Swiss watch positively Alpine fresh isn’t so much the clockwork ticking inside, as its packaging. The anachronism that is the mechanical watch is increasingly being spiked with lightweight yet super-durable materials, some of which are more at home in the suspension wishbone of an F1 car. 

From ceramic cases on the outside, to self-lubricating silicon micro-mechanics ticking away inside, watches are fresher and more cutting-edge than ever. Not through the efforts of classically trained watchmakers, however, but because of canny watch CEOs with a hotline to Switzerland’s finest minds, scattered throughout neighbouring micro-tech facilities. And while you might think it’s evolution for evolution’s sake, scratch beneath the surface and you’ll soon discover otherwise.

Scratching won’t get you very far in the seminal case, however, as Rado’s breakthrough in the ’60s explicitly set out to resist such abuse. Its egg-shaped DiaStar Original looked like something Captain Kirk would wear, and for good reason – the case was formed not of steel, but a newfangled hard metal called tungsten carbide. It defined Rado’s ultra-futurist manifesto and by the ’80s, Rado had mastered and pioneered the use of ultra-light and ultra-tough ceramic. It’s a material that’s now found in watches from (but not necessarily made by – third-party tech facilities are notoriously secretive) IWC, Bell & Ross and Panerai, plus fashion darlings Ralph Lauren and Chanel, whose monochrome ceramic bracelets just happen to echo Mademoiselle Coco’s iconic quilted handbag (and really are made by Chanel’s own ceramic facility in La Chaux-de-Fonds). 

Rado’s sister company, Comadur, makes all of its ceramic components and has recently innovated so-called ‘high-tech plasma’ ceramic. Gases activated at 20,000°C raise the temperature of finished white ceramic to a sizzling 900°C, transforming it into an otherworldly material with a mysterious metallic glow, without using any metal at all.

“Beyond the sheer novelty of using ceramic for our cases,” says Rado CEO Matthias Breschan, “more and more newcomers to the brand are realising that ceramic is nice to wear. It’s super comfortable, and thermally balanced with your skin.”

At the highest end of the luxury market, however, you have a much harder job convincing dyed-in-the-wool collectors that anything not encased in gold or platinum is a genuinely luxurious product. But a certain Frenchman called Richard Mille has proved most convincing in this argument. 

The sintering oven at Rado’s casemaker, Comadur, in which ceramic components are baked for 24 hours

Mille has been experimenting with the concept of weight reduction in haute horlogerie since the conception of his brand in 2000 – a revolutionary exercise in no-compromise technicality. He treated his cases like racing car chassis, the ‘engine’ suspended from it, with nothing as superfluous as a dial to obscure its inner workings. 

“When I first produced tourbillons with titanium and ALUSIC cases and carbon base plates, I was fighting against perceived value,” Mille recalls. “A titanium watch could not be a luxurious timepiece as it did not weigh enough. However, mentalities rapidly changed and gradually amateurs soon appreciated my watches for their extreme lightness associated with the best technology.”

It wasn’t just amateurs, but leading sportsmen too. Handling Rafael Nadal’s Richard Mille RM 27 watch for the first time provoked laughter. Not just because its delicate mechanics kept good time despite Rafa’s punishing swing, but mainly because it’s so surreally light – less than 20 grams, strap included – that it actually floats in water, thanks to the use of lithium-alloy, usually used in satellites and F1 cars. The case of Rafa’s latest version, the RM 27-02, is a cocktail of carbon and quartz, weighs just 19 grams, and costs a princely $800,000 (give or take a few grand).

Increasingly, the smart money is on new, proprietary composites. The latest and greatest is Breitlight, which, as the punning name suggests, is exclusive to Breitling. It packages a 50mm beast of a 24-hour chronograph, the Avenger Hurricane (£6,450), which wouldn’t look out of place on Batman’s utility belt. Like a Swatch, it’s plastic, but plastic as you’ve never known it. It’s a polymer composite spiked with carbon fibre, similar to that used for Glock’s signature pistol. The upshot of which is that it’s 3.3 times lighter than steel, yet almost impossible to dent, scratch or corrode.

Smartwatches may be (temporarily) snatching all the attention from ‘proper’ watches, but, for now at least, traditional watches are proving that the use of high-tech materials can keep them relevant in the 21st century, as well as smart in their own right.

This article is taken from Port issue 19.