Time Told Otherwise

At Van Cleef & Arpels, Timekeeping Is Never About Showing Off The Most Groundbreaking Movement, But Telling A Story Or Sharing An Emotion

- CAROLINE SUGANDA

For Van Cleef & Arpels, telling time is about more than just knowing the hour. “You have your phone for that,” says Jean Bienayme, international marketing and communication director at Van Cleef & Arpels during an interview with him at the international watch fair Watches & Wonder in Geneva earlier in April.

The French maison is first and foremost a jeweller, so telling time must be done poetically — forging a narrative or providing an artistic interpretation as part of the process. This unique approach to watchmaking is distinctive to Van Cleef & Arpels, because of its identity as a jeweller, and it all started back in 1906. “We are all about jewels, and at the beginning, we liked to add, sometimes — when it made sense — a mechanism to jewellery,” Bienayme states. “Watchmaking [for us] is a way to create movements in jewellery, as well as to tell a story, which is very important to the maison.”

Nothing bears out this philosophy better than the brand’s Poetic Complication timepieces, each one a true marvel in its ability to fuse intricate artistry and breathtaking beauty with precise timekeeping. A standout in this collection is the Pont des Amoureux, which utilises the retrograde movement to tell time in an unconventional way, through the figures of a woman and a man (who are the hour and minute hands respectively). As they slowly “move along” on the bridge they mark out the time for the wearer, and finally get to “meet” at 12 o’clock.

Van Cleef & Arpels is also known for its secret watches, like the Ludo watch. This piece looks like a beautiful jewelled bracelet, and only reveals its time-telling function through the dial that appears when the two rings are pressed towards each other.