Tag: Vacheron Constantin

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

Architeliers

The most venerable practitioners of haute horology may nurture their craft in necessarily classical fashion, but forget about chocolate-box, timbered chalets with painted shutters – the modern watch manufacture is more likely to be a starkly modernist affair, wedged into the Jura mountain’s rolling slopes, conforming to Switzerland’s eco-forward, net-zero ‘Minergie’ construction standards. Some increasingly grand designs are housing the creation of these miniature masterpieces – juxtaposed to their bucolic setting as wilfully as their output is archaic

Maison Vacheron Constantin, photography Maud Guye-Vuilläme   

Plan-les-Watches

Drive southwest out of Geneva’s medieval Old Town and things rapidly yield to scrappy concrete edgeland. Then suddenly: a spotless industrial park in the suburb of Plans-les-Ouates appears, plastered with gleaming überfactories belonging to some of Switzerland’s top brands. Most significantly, Patek Philippe on Chemin du Pont-du-Centenaire, fronted by its famous Spirale sculpture. Next door, there’s Rolex’s mammoth 11-storey building, which covers the area of five football pitches yet solely focuses on the manufacture of cases and bracelets, even operating its own gold foundry on-site.

On the western edge of the park, you’ll find within walking distance of each other Piaget’s jewellery, haute horlogerie and case-making facility, along with Frédérique Constant’s manufacture and Harry Winston’s too. But nestled on the outskirts of the appropriately named Chemin du Tourbillon, you’ll find the most spectacular: Vacheron Constantin.

Designed and built by Swiss-born French architect Bernard Tschumi and his practice (2001–2005), a metal envelope is biomorphically folded over a concrete structure, strangely harmonious with the surrounding parkland and reminiscent of Marc Newson’s early-’90s chrome furniture.

The curved metal envelope is supposed to serve as a levelling, common denominator for both manufacturing and management: traditionally, blue-collar machinists have toiled in gloomy basements, while white-collar artisans and execs were housed in the sunlit upper storeys. The CNC machines will always be street level, given their sheer tonnage, but their operators can hold their heads rightly high.

BIG architect practice’s spiral marvel, set into the slopes of Vallée de Joux

Bold as Brassus

Le Brassus is a tiny village in the Vallée de Joux: a meandering 60-minute drive up from Geneva airport into an Elysian field of high-altitude horology. Home also to Blancpain and Jaeger-LeCoultre (all connected by the same spinal road), it was the Silicon Valley of its age over 150 years ago, pioneering micro-mechanical super-computers and attracting the finest minds.

Social geography is everything for Swiss watchmaking, and while the Joux is no longer reliant on 19th-century dairy farmers hanging up their cattle prods come the first flurry of winter, pivoting to crafting tiny screws from iron ore mined from the surrounding hills, watchmakers remain proud homebodies. So Audemars Piguet stays stoically put in Le Brassus, where they’ve been since 1875; modernising nevertheless, further-flung employees doggedly applying snow-chains to their tyres every November.

This aspic-preserved industrial model, not to mention AP’s breathless feats of mechanical innovation, are celebrated by a new Musée Atelier annexe (2014–2020), bedded organically into the adjoining valley as a spiral in architectural form – the shape of every mechanical timekeeper’s ticking heart. Bjarke Ingels and his Danish practice, BIG have housed the Audemars family’s priceless collection, as well as their most elite watchmakers’ benches, all within cleverly delineated ‘swoops’, supported by curved glass walls. A widescreen temple to timekeeping, the building is topped by a lusciously grassed winding roof just out of reach from the cows outside.

V.I.PP6

Five years of massively ambitious construction work came to completion at the start of 2020: Patek Philippe’s superyacht-style ‘PP6’, immediately next door to 1996’s building, which the watchmaker had outgrown within 8 years. All despite a production of just 66,000 tiny timepieces a year.

Its monochrome Stormtrooper aesthetic stretching 200 metres, the 10 storeys (four of them underground) unite every one of the house’s Genevan manufacturing ateliers – a great advantage given the growing complexity of production operations (final assembly of the parts remains housed over the road). Moreover, PP6 offers ample space for the rare métiers d’art handcrafts being preserved for the future by Patek Philippe, and, by the same token, training of employees across the board.

Donning starched-white lab coats and funnelling through the ‘boulevard’ that feeds every employee up and outwards to their respective workspace, what immediately strikes us is the breadth of every corridor. This is because, unlike the industrial MO mentioned above, huge multi-axis CNC milling and turning machines occupy every floor, not just the basement. And they need to be easily moved around.

It’s not all starchitect swagger, then – the art of watchmaking itself is being modernised as well as rehoused.

This article is taken from Port issue 31. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here

Making a Date

Or in the case of Switzerland’s most historic watchmaker, crafting whole calendars – the most exacting and exquisite horological calendars on the planet

Photography Benjamin Swanson

More than 260 years of uninterrupted production and profit doesn’t happen because of heritage and nostalgia; it comes from constant preparation for your 261st year, then your 262nd, the 263rd… It’s why the salmon-pink masterpiece depicted here is the perfect embodiment of its maker, Vacheron Constantin, being a calendar perpetuelle.

Perpetual, thanks to a 48-toothed cam just behind that gorgeous dial, rotating a full 360º every four years, guaranteeing you never need adjust the date, even on February 29th. (Except on secular, or centurial years (but not those divisible by 400) thanks to Pope Gregory XIII’s calendar not quite syncing with the Earth’s solar orbit – so do remember to adjust your perpetual calendar on the 1st of March in 2100.)

Then ‘perpetual’ in a second sense, since the seeming anachronism of this watch’s elaborate, over-engineered mechanics belies the “what next?”, “why not?” mindset to get here – regardless of better time (and a slightly more reliable date) kept by your iPhone. Thanks to Vacheron Constantin’s broader-than-most outlook from 1755 onward, the brand itself has gone the distance; to the point where the 324-part movement inside the Traditionelle Perpetual Calendar Chronograph is considered the finest of its kind, befitting a 43mm case of pure 950 platinum.

The overarching vibe of any Vacheron watch is more Latin – rangy, even – than its handful of contemporaries. Reflecting this classical élan is Jean-Marc Vacheron himself, who in 1755 opened his atelier on an island in Geneva’s arterial Rhône. He was something of a Renaissance man, interested in literature, history and philosophy – plus, in a perfect horological storm, fascinated by the rising potential of micro-mechanics in astronomy, chronometry and connoisseurial grandstanding.

These were passions inherited by his son Abraham and grandson Jacques-Barthélemy, ensuring their ornately decorated pocket watches made it into the right hands, throughout the era’s emerging, further-flung markets. Its guiding motto, “Do better if possible and that is always possible,” first appeared in a letter François Vacheron wrote to Jacques-Barthélémy Vacheron – the former a hotshot marketeer brought aboard in 1819, the latter proving particularly clever at the helm, going on to navigate the company through some choppy waters. The French Revolution for a start, followed by the Napoleonic Wars, then France’s annexation of Geneva itself. How did the family firm stay afloat, cut off from so many of its elite clients? A temporary diversification into textiles, for one. And cherry brandy.

Such far-sightedness is rare in watchmaking; the fact every major Swiss marque remains voluntarily ring-fenced by mountains is metaphor made real. So it probably helps that Vacheron Constantin has always based itself just outside the Jura, down in cosmopolitan Geneva – a hub on the global stage, let alone European. The rather ’80s velvet-lined, walnut-veneered retail experience remains, but think of what the Richemont Group’s flagship watchmaker’s actual flagship resembles. A furled spaceship in factory form, poised for lift-off, light years from its anodyne Genevan suburb.

The batteries of million-franc milling machines populating the ground floor of no.10 Chemin du Tourbillon, feeding the hushed floors of finishers, decorators and watchmakers upstairs – the elite artisans bringing things to life – are the latest generation in a technology embraced by VC since the mid-19th-century. Other stoic practitioners of the Swiss craft turned their nose up, but not Georges-Auguste Leschot, who saw the potential of new American tech capable of making components in series with such precision that they could be interchangeable across a suite of different calibres. More importantly, Leschot also saw that brand integrity and baked-in product value need not be sacrificed downstream.

Vacheron Constantin had recruited Leschot as technical director in 1839 – a killer hire, given he’d invented nothing less than the ubiquitously adopted Swiss lever escapement nine years prior. Boosting VC’s consistency in precision production, Leschot invested in the ‘pantograph’ – a pre-digital form of computer-numerical-control (CNC) machining, which centres and drills plates and bridges repeatably, scaling down the geometry of a fixed template.

Further, Vacheron Constantin became keenly involved with research into non-magnetic materials in 1862 – magnetism becoming a big problem for watch’s delicate metallic parts just as electricity and motors were becoming part of daily life. By 1885, VC’s mixologists had conjured a cocktail of metallurgy in the ticking ‘escapement’ mechanism: balance wheel, balance spring and lever shaft all in palladium, the lever arms in bronze and the escape wheel in gold. A full decade ahead of Charles Édouard Guillaume discovering the nickel-based alloy ‘Invar’, subsequently adopted wholesale.

Calendars, though: it’s fitting that watchmaking’s most venerable name excels in keeping track of long time as well as the immediate or quotidian. Vacheron Constantin may not have been the first with any of horology’s major ‘complications’, but like Apple – famous for keeping its powder dry before knowing when to conquer the emerging worlds of personal computers, desktop publishing, MP3 players and smartphones – it has applied its experience to being the best.

Turn the Traditionnelle Perpetual Calendar Chronograph’s platinum case over, and you are sucked into a Lilliputian constellation of spellbinding mechanical delicacy. It conforms to the stringent ‘Poinçon de Genève’ seal of hand-finish. Circular-grained mainplates, Côtes de Genève motif on bridges, hand-bevelled components and straight-grained flanks, applied even to components that remain invisible once the movement has been assembled. Crafts all endangered until recent years’ concerted efforts in preservation, at the hands of Switzerland’s ‘Big Five’ – VC, as well as Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Audemars Piguet and Girard-Perregaux.

Whether it’s the new salmon-dial posterboy for Vacheron’s ‘grand complications’ atelier (and we haven’t even touched on the intertwined chronograph works, which starts to explain the £132,000 price tag), or the blue-eyed-boy of VC’s Patrimony collection featured here also, stripped back to perpetual calendar alone (£73,500), or the simpler-still Traditionelle Complete Calendar (£36,200): you wear all of their mechanical hearts under your sleeve, and by the same token, the beating heart of Vacheron Constantin, in perpetuity.

vacheron-constantin.com

Photography Benjamin Swanson

Post production The Wizard Retouch

This article is taken from Port issue 31. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here

Movement in Focus

From our special watch innovation report in issue 30, Alex Doak examines six beautifully exposed case backs

Calibre: 240

Watchmaker: Patek Philippe

Year of origin: 1977

Vital statistics: 161 parts; 48-hour self-wound power; 3Hz balance oscillation

Housing: Calatrava 4997/200G-001

Created when electronic quartz technology was slimming down wristwatches to diaphanous extents, Patek Philippe’s micro-mechanical engineers proved it could be done with moving parts too, ‘embedding’ the self-winding gold rotor into the height of the base movement where it would normally spin on top. So perfect, the calibre geometry has barely changed since.

Calibre: 7121

Watchmaker: Audemars Piguet

Year of origin: 2022

Vital statistics: 268 parts; 55-hour self-wound power; 4Hz balance oscillation

Housing: Royal Oak ‘Jumbo’ Extra-Thin 50th Anniversary

For the first time in 50 years, since AP’s iconic steel sports watch took the Riviera jet set by storm with its octagonal boldness, the mechanics inside – traditionally based on Jaeger-LeCoultre’s 2120 of 1967 – have been upgraded for this golden anniversary with the all-new, in-house 7121. Its energy reserves are up, among many things, charged by a rotor stencilled out all too appropriately.

Calibre: BVL 318

Watchmaker: Bulgari

Year of origin: 2019

Vital statistics: 433 parts; 55-hour self-wound power; 4Hz balance oscillation

Housing: Octo Finissimo Chronograph

Intricate ‘integration’ of the stopwatch mechanism into the already-wafer-thin base movement, along with a platinum weight rotating about its circumference, Bulgari scored its fifth slimmest-ever record in 2019, cementing Octo as so much more than a sculptural design classic.

Calibre: DUW 2002

Watchmaker: Nomos Glashütte

Year of origin: 2013

Vital statistics: 84-hour manually wound power; 3Hz balance oscillation

Housing: Lux Zikade

Since reviving interest in East Germany’s former Mecca of watchmaking, the village of Glashütte, Nomos has spent the last 30 years building a Bauhaus-designed horological tribe, with concomitant Bauhaus accessibility. Just occasionally though, its watchmakers like to dabble in the higher end, celebrating their indigenous Saxon traditions in the process: three-quarter baseplate (with glorious sunray polish), engraved balance cock and blued steel screws.

Calibre: 9R31

Watchmaker: Grand Seiko

Year of origin: 2019

Vital statistics: 72-hour manually wound power; 32,768Hz quartz-crystal oscillation

Housing: Spring Drive Omiwatari

A concept doggedly pursued from 1977 by Seiko’s ambitious young engineer Yoshikazu Akahane: an ‘everlasting’ watch powered by a traditional mainspring, yet delivering the one-second-a-day quartz precision that had made the Japanese giant’s name, with hands gliding smoothly via an electronic brake system. A mere 28 years and 600 prototypes later, Spring Drive was born.

Calibre: 3200

Watchmaker: Vacheron Constantin

Year of origin: 2015

Vital statistics: 292 parts; 65-hour manually wound power; 2.5Hz balance oscillation

Housing: Traditionnelle Tourbillon Chronograph

The apogee of modern haute horlogerie, steeped in brand heritage stretching back an unbroken 260-plus years, yet benefitting from all of today’s computer-facilitated CAD design and CNC machining. Note the 360-degrees-per-minute tourbillon, or ‘whirlwind’ cage, shaped as a Maltese cross, the emblem of Geneva’s oldest maison.

Photography Leandro Farina at East Photographic

Set design Alice Whittick

Production assistant Hermione Russell at artProduction

This article is taken from Port issue 30. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here

How Geneva Got Its Groove Back

Switzerland’s venerable haute horloger, Vacheron Constantin, is winning over millennials and gen-zedders with just the right balance of new-age fun and vintage feel: Say hello to FiftySix

Chief among the FiftySix’s distinguishing features is its ‘sector’ type dial, applied with alternating 3D Arabic and baton indices.

Out of the blue, storied Swiss names who previously erred on the side of tradition have started launching sporty, entry-level collections squarely aimed at younger customers. There’s the Ryan Reynolds approved Piaget Polo S, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s reboot of its rakish Polaris diver and, leading the charge, Vacheron Constantin, and its brand new FiftySix.

Vacheron is not a brand known for having its finger on the pulse of the young and cool. This is a name that prides itself, not only on its exacting craft, but the fact that it’s a craft that has continued for 263 years – the longest continuously run watchmaker in history. Its collections have names such as Patrimony and Traditionnelle. Napoleon Bonaparte owned one. The most modern it usually gets is the Overseas, and that was launched in the 1990s, inspired by something from the 1970s.

Then, this year, along comes FiftySix. Still, admittedly, inspired by a watch from (you’ve guessed it) 1956, it launched as a slice of vintage styling, in either steel or rose gold, that is relatively reasonably priced. At 10,500 pounds the steel automatic model lowers the brand’s entry level by a few thousand, while retaining all the hand-finished mechanical loveliness you’d expect from VC, ticking through a sapphire caseback beneath a solid-gold winding rotor.

The underlying tenet of FiftySix is its bridge between the present and past – 1956, specifically. As well dial design, this marriage is at its most visceral in profile; in particular its prominent ‘box’ type crystal rising well above the bezel – historically made from Plexiglas or mineral glass, now in scratch-resistant sapphire.

“We wanted the FiftySix collection to incorporate a retro-contemporary style – to be an elegant watch, which can be worn in any circumstance,” explains Christian Selmoni, style and heritage director for Vacheron Constantin. “The fact that the whole collection has a diameter of 40mm – even the styles with the moonphase, day-date or power-reserve complications – makes it quite easy for both men and women to wear.”

Alongside the sculpted Maltese Cross features of FiftySix’s case design, one of the collection’s distinguishing characteristics lies in its sector-type dial. While the circumferential chapter ring, punctuated by alternating Arabic numerals and baton-type hour markers, channels its 1950s inspiration, the presence of two subtle surface tones adds a beguiling play of light across the whole ensemble, lending depth and brilliance.

And this isn’t an ancient brand, wildly looking around for the latest demographic to attract; stats prove that millennials are coming back to mechanically driven watches.

A recent survey from Deloitte found that this sector wants to invest in high-end Swiss watch brands. The research showed that, in the UK alone, if given 4,000 pounds as a cash gift to spend on a watch, 70 per cent would spend it on one mechanical watch, as opposed to spending 400 pounds a year on a smartwatch, for the next 10 years. China and Italy also showed a majority thinking the same way; only the US favoured the smart sector over the mechanical.

Being Vacheron Constantin, the movements ticking inside every FiftySix are as good as it gets, their exquisite hand-finishing admirable through the cases’ crystal caseback: ‘Côtes de Genève’ stripes across every bridge, circular graining and snailing.

And there’s a very good reason for this. While Generation Z – those born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s – have grown up with the Internet, millennials still remember wearing watches. “This shift in the balance of buying power cannot be ignored,” says Sky Sit, founder of new online platform, Skolorr, which champions independent luxury watchmakers with the younger generation specifically in mind. “I witnessed firsthand the emergence of the affluent millennials’ new buying behaviour, and felt the shift in my bones, even back in 2013 and ’14,” she adds, referring to her past as communications director of rebellious sports brand, Linde Werdelin.

“Yes, the kids are certainly spending money in more of an interesting way with Skolorr-type indie brands. But this demographic is also the key to remaining relevant for the bigger luxury players over the next 10 to 15 years.”

And it is exactly this customer Vacheron has in mind with FiftySix – which has all the components that matter: The look is reassuringly vintage, the styling is simple and, at 40mm, it isn’t flashy. Vacheron also has appeal because it isn’t one of the more obvious names. Research by Luxury Society found that millennials are eschewing brands such as Rolex because they come with a certain set of expectations about the person wearing them. They prefer brands that feel personal to them over those that are signifiers of wealth or luxury. Vacheron Constantin couldn’t be more ‘in the know’.

The 22-carat yellow- gold winding rotor spins on ceramic ball bearings with every wrist movement, requiring no lubrication or maintenance.

That said, Vacheron is still using the FiftySix collection to showcase its watchmaking prowess. Alongside a complete calendar there is now a whirring, whirlwind tourbillon variant: an addition that might seem at odds with the quiet composure of the collection, but is a canny move when you consider the inevitable thirst for more connoisseur-like features when those nascent watch enthusiasts move up to the corner office and collector status.

While the millennial generation might not be the saviours of the Swiss industry – an industry never likely to need saving by anyone – in appealing to them, long-overdue invigoration has certainly been brought to the landscape. Unlikely launches from the likes of Vacheron Constantin that feel as fresh as FiftySix surely benefit everyone.

Photography Robin Broadbent

vacheron-constantin.com