Ballad of thin watches
Almost everything is going digital nowadays. Your smartphones can tell you almost anything — time, the weather, NBA box scores, what part of Manila has the least hellish traffic situation — except how to earn more money to pay for that damn gadget. If you were Philip K. Dick, you’d rue the day when a chip would be implanted into your head so you could SMS everyone with the use of brain waves. Add smileys with a flex of the cerebellum; do your trolling, lurking and stalking even while aboard the MRT packed with the other digital lemmings. A nation of electric zombies texting away in weird euphoria.
These things happen, but humanity, artistry and craftsmanship — they find a way to persist, even to thrive.
This is according to Guillain Maspe?tiol, Jaeger-LeCoultre North Asia managing director Richemont Asia-Pacific Ltd. He explains, “Remember in the late ’80s there was a crisis of quartz? The quartz coming from mainly Japan back then was very affordable, had spot-on precision, very accurate and mass-marketed. It did put the other mechanical watch brands at risk.”
People were taking the easy route, following a more high-tech mode, paying less money for something accurate, trendy, and almost disposable rather than paying more money for something more accurate, classy, that could be kept for life.
“That period of time forced the other watch brands to reinvent themselves,” Maspe?tiol says. “The vision was long-term. They said, ‘What can we do to face this?’”
The same thing nowadays, he adds. “The smartphone — yours and mine — its life span is very, very short. You can do millions of things with it, but after six months, there is a new model already. It’s full of content. And yet somehow it does not carry an emotional content.”
In the case of mechanical watches, the opposite is true. Relatives turn 18, graduate, get married or have kids — the idea of giving them a treasured mechanical watch, well, that is special. “Rather than go, ‘Here is my old mobile phone which was launched 10 years ago…’ (laughs). And the youth nowadays — who are bombarded with so much information — they want something authentic. Not just something they could just put in their pockets which would be out of fashion a few months from now.”
Authenticity, emotional content — that’s where Jaeger-LeCoultre comes in.
The brand expanded because of an association between a Parisian businessman and a Swiss watchmaking family based in Vallée de Joux, Le Sentier.
At the start of the 1900s, Jacques-David LeCoultre, grandson of LeCoultre founder Antoine, met Edmond Jaeger in Paris. This partnership brought Jaeger-LeCoultre to the luxury watch market. The alliance gave birth to the world’s thinnest pocket watch featuring a blend of aesthetic refinement and horological sophistication that only a manufacture uniting the full range of skills under one roof could hope to achieve.
Today, Jaeger-LeCoultre confirms its ability to anticipate the future of fine watchmaking by unveiling the Master Ultra Thin Minute Repeater Flying Tourbillon watch, the 11th creation in the Hybris Mechanica collection and the first ultra-thin Grand Complication model. These are sleek, sleek watches; a historical nod to the brand’s roots.
Hybris Mechanica 11 strikes a balance between historical inspiration and avant-garde technology. It is nurtured by the distinctive elegance of early 20th century pocket-watches, which constituted the last incarnations of a cultural tradition before the wristwatch took over. Each detail of its refined design has its reason for being and serves two purposes in equal measure: establishing an aesthetic identity as well as ensuring the smooth functionality of the mechanism.
“This year we’ve also launched the Hybris Artistica,” informs Maspe?tiol. “With it, you can express yourself in a certain way. It is a combination of art and technique.”
The man sees Jaeger-LeCoultre as part of an elite, very small club of fine watchmaking brands.
“The strategy is not to change drastically in terms of orientation,” he concludes, adding that the brand invests in the classic complication segment.
“Innovation is part of our blood, our culture, thus we will not cease to innovate. But we will make sure we will combine innovation with the characteristic of being user-friendly: even for our most complicated watches, we have basically one push piece that adjusts everything — date, month, year — easy to read but with a very strong content.”
And, yes, grand complications can come in ultra-thin packages.
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Jaeger-LeCoultre (JLC) is exclusively distributed in the Philippines by Lucerne. JLC timepieces are available at Jaeger-LeCoultre boutique at Greenbelt 5, Lucerne at Shangri-La Plaza Mall, Glorietta 4 and Ayala Center Cebu.
