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…
In a subterranean workroom of a building on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, there are cabinets filled with bags of Chantilly lace in myriad shades: Yves Klein blue, sherbet orange, a silvery periwinkle. Nestled between the furniture are some half-dozen sewing machines, at which a small staff of seamstresses works while constructing corsets for Cadolle, a…
A hand-embroidered strap embedded with microcapsules of bespoke perfume is the highlight of a new concept watch, Égérie — The Pleats of Time, created by Vacheron Constantin in collaboration with the Paris couturier Yiqing Yin. Ms. Yin, an ambassador for the brand who designed its Égérie model in 2020, worked for several months with the…
June 6 will be the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, the beginning of action that ultimately led to the end of World War II. The event still looms large in military history — and with watch enthusiasts, who snap up the vintage timepieces that companies such as…
Ever since the Norwegian women’s beach handball team made it known that they were required to wear teeny-tiny bikini bottoms for competition into a cause célèbre, a quiet revolution has been brewing throughout women’s sports. It’s one that questions received conventions about what female athletes do — or don’t — have to wear to perform…
It was shape that drove the development of the Cut, the women’s wristwatch recently introduced by Hermès. “The transformation and the creation of the shape was really the starting point for me,” said Philippe Delhotal, director of creation at Hermès Horloger. “We didn’t want to go back to an icon of the maison — the…
More than 75 timepieces and jewels by Van Cleef & Arpels will be on display at Cromwell Place, a gallery space in the South Kensington neighborhood of London, from May 26 to June 9. It will be the brand’s first watch-focused exhibition in Britain, according to Rainer Bernard, director of watchmaking research and development. “Poetry…
In 2022, several months after Joseph Barreto retired as a high school guidance counselor in East Harlem, he got a keepsake gift: a 42-millimeter stainless steel Omega Constellation watch with a grayish-taupe dial and prominent date display. But getting the timepiece wasn’t as straightforward as, say, walking into Omega’s Fifth Avenue boutique. Instead, the Hackensack,…
Things have been tough in Britain lately. A cost of living crisis, soaring rents and economic recession. Illness at Buckingham Palace and the fracturing of the national service. But the so-called disunited kingdom was brought together last week in collective horror and mild revulsion. The catalyst? Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who opted to wear a…
LAGOS, Nigeria — For the past decade, Nigeria’s best-known ambassadors have, arguably, been its musicians: Burna Boy, WizKid, Davido, Tiwa Savage Asake and Tems, who have popularized Afrobeats beyond West Africa. At a moment when music, literature, visual art and food from across the African continent continue to gain global popularity, fashion designers, particularly those…
