Entering the atelier of the watchmaker Julien Tixier in Switzerland’s Vallée de Joux, one must navigate carefully past high benches filled to the brim with equipment such as decades-old lathes, drilling machines, grinders, cutters and high-tech devices, plus spaces dedicated to heat treatment, galvanization, decoration and assembly.
Despite being only about 270 square feet, this miniature factory is where Mr. Tixier transformed bars of raw steel into components for the prototype of the Monday, a $87,730, 40.8-millimeter, three-hand watch that is the first from the new brand Renaud Tixier. Sixty-two of the watches are to be made and over the next 20 years another six models are planned, named after the other days of the week.
The crowded space has an air of a crazy inventor’s playground, appropriate perhaps for a man who knew that he wanted to be a watchmaker since he was 7 years old growing up on the west coast of France. Mr. Tixier is now 31, and his long dark hair, goatee, skinny jeans and well-worn black fedora add to the picture of a free-spirited artist. “It would not be possible for me to work in industrial watchmaking,” he said. “I would prefer to change my job.”
Since 2018, Mr. Tixier has been an independent artisan creating unique pieces, but in 2023, after a couple of successful collaborations with the industry veteran Dominique Renaud, the men founded their own brand, Renaud Tixier, based in Nyon, Switzerland, north of Geneva. (Mr. Renaud, 64, was a co-founder of the high-complication watchmaker Renaud & Papi in 1986.)
Chief Executive Michel Nieto called Renaud Tixier “a proper brand with a proper structure; a mix of in-house capacities, partners and suppliers.”
“We have employed two young watchmakers already,” he said in February during a tour of the facility, with some rooms still awaiting their watchmaking benches. “Now we are seven people in the team, and soon we will be 15 or 20.”
This year, he said, “we will deliver 62 pieces between September and December.”
“Let’s say October,” Mr. Renaud interjected, with a chuckle and feigned stress.
Mr. Renaud, in the slightly tinted glasses he wears since having two eye surgeries in three years, was showing a plastic model of the brand’s first innovation — a new micro-rotor in the movement of the Monday watch.
“Micro-rotors are elegant,” he said, as he began a technical explanation. “But because of the size and gravity, they do not rewind the mainspring as well as big rotors. To resolve this problem, we first lead the energy from the oscillating weight into a spring. This catapults and amplifies the energy and speed into a spinner connected to the wheels which wind the mainspring.”
He has two names for the patent-pending device, calling it either a spinner-thruster or a dancer.
The officially stated power reserve of the Monday is at least 60 hours, but performance tests of the prototype had shown a power reserve of close to 100 hours, Mr. Nieto said.
How They Met
Mr. Tixier met Mr. Renaud at a conference in 2016 where Mr. Renaud presented his Dominique Renaud DR 01 Twelve First timepiece.
“When I was in watchmaking school, we considered what Dominique was doing with Renaud & Papi as the pinnacle of creative watchmaking,” Mr. Tixier said. “And when we met, we totally clicked. It is like a friendship in ideas.”
Between bites of steak tartare over lunch with Mr. Tixier at the Hôtel des Horlogers near the workshop, Mr. Renaud said their connection was incredible: “We can talk about movements in three dimension and have the same vision in our heads, without putting anything on paper.”
A few years later, they collaborated on two perpetual calendar watches, the DRT Tempus Fugit released in 2022 and the Secular Perpetual Calendar, made in a collaboration with the brand Furlan Marri, in 2023 (destined to be auctioned in May at the Only Watch charity auction).
Then the idea of their own brand was born.
Both say that the ideas for the “inventions” resulting from their collaborations come from Mr. Renaud, while Mr. Tixier brings them to life using traditional methods. “But, of course,” Mr. Renaud said, “we develop my ideas together. At Renaud & Papi I was always the brute inventor, and now I learn so much from Julien, especially since he is doing finishings and decorations in such a perfect way.”
If there is such a thing as perfection, that is. “We can improve everything, and I don’t think perfection exists,” Mr. Tixier said. If you achieve perfection with a certain magnification, you can always increase magnification — and today the collectors do. Ten years ago, collectors were looking at timepieces with a simple loupe. Today they use a microscope, so we need to improve everything.”
The Collective
As the plates were cleared and the espressos arrived, the men emphasized that they were not the only people behind Renaud Tixier and the Monday watch, saying instead that it was the work of a collective. The enameling of the main spring barrel, they said, is made by Maëlle Constant and the hand engravings on the side of the gold cases, which appear like glittering, superfine sandpaper, are by Coralie Mercier.
“These crafts make each watch unique,” Mr. Tixier said.
For the Monday’s deceptively simple design, with a gray sunburst dial in an 18-karat rose or white gold case, they reached out to Edge Design, a company run by Fabrice Gonet and Olivier Leu. “They improved and transformed our idea through very open-minded discussions,” Mr. Tixier said. “The shape of the bridges became more square, but with more handmade aesthetics.”
“The dial is not the star,” Mr. Tixier said. “The star is the movement, the invention.”
For now, Renaud Tixier timepieces will be sold directly to collectors, and then through selected retailers. The Monday was officially introduced last month in Tokyo.
For the long-term, Renaud Tixier is planning to make six more different watches over a 20-year period. “The Tuesday we plan to release in 2026,” Mr. Nieto said. “The problem with Dominique is to hold him back, he is so full of ideas.”
“For me,” Mr. Renaud said, “the goal of Renaud Tixier is to transmit knowledge and friendship. It is an easy way to spend time together; we share good moments all the time.”
As Mr. Tixier put it: “We want to do what we love.”
“A watch is about transmitting passion and emotion to the customer,” he added. “The watches we make together become proof of good friendship.”
