Jewellers as watchmakers: Chanel, Hermès, Bulgari and Van Cleef & Arpels are venturing further into the hallowed halls of horology, bringing artistry – as well as flowers and feathers – to timepieces

Mar 19 , 2025

Piaget has achieved cult status in the world of haute horology, and last year relaunched several iconic timepieces including the Black Tie, now renamed the Andy Warhol. Photo: Handout

Cartier was one of the first luxury houses to introduce its signature style to the world of watchmaking, and recently Tiffany & Co. signalled an intention to shift more of its focus to horology

Walking through the Palexpo in Geneva during the annual Watches and Wonders event is a veritable sensory overload. There are just so many booths, and so many watches.

A visit to the Van Cleef & Arpels booth is something of a reprieve. As though you’ve wandered into a magical forest. As the then chief executive of the French maison Nicolas Bos (now chief executive of Richemont) once told me, at Watches and Wonders you’re surrounded by boys and their toys – cars, boats – and “here we are with our fairies and our butterflies”.

Those fairies and butterflies that flit across the dials of the maison’s novelties, however, come with serious horological prowess.

Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier watch from Van Cleef & Arpels. Photo: Handout

Unlike many of the other watch brands you see at the annual trade show though, Van Cleef & Arpels prefers to keep its technical wizardry hidden – not a spinning tourbillon to be seen. It’s something Rainer Bernard, head of research and development for watchmaking at Van Cleef & Arpels, has likened to an opera: you see the beauty of the performance, but none of the unsightly rigging behind the scenes.

Several of the maison’s watches this year scooped prizes at the “watch Oscars”– aka the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG). Further proof of just how serious these timepieces are.

Bernard calls the mechanisms behind the maison’s timepieces “poetic complications”, and says these give the watches “a fourth dimension”.

Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux watch by Van Cleef & Arpels. Photo: Handout

“The movement of elements plays an important role in the story. It can be the movement of two lovers towards each other on a bridge in Paris who meet for a kiss at midnight. … It can be flowers, indicating the hours by being open or not, changing the visual aspect of the garden over time. Often, you must learn how to read the time, as the indication is part of the poetic story – a unique way of reading the time while instilling emotion,” he says.

“Our Poetic Complications invite you always to ‘take the time to read the time’, which is also a poetic invitation to capture this very precise moment of your life.”