Rock Crystal Is Back in (Watch) Style

Decorative gems have adorned watches for centuries. But, beyond diamonds and the classic trinity of rubies, emeralds and sapphires, a colorless variety of quartz called rock crystal actually is the stone used most often in horology. Yet, “as a material, not a lot of people know about it,” said Tom Heap, deputy director and head…

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Renaud Tixier Introduces the Monday, Its First Watch

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…

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Hermès Created a Shape for Its New Women’s Watch

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…

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One Watch Fan Went to Switzerland for a Retirement Keepsake

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,…

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Raúl Pagès Details His Next Watch Projects

“In the beginning it was not the goal to be independent, to create a brand,” the independent watchmaker Raúl Pagès said in his two-room hillside atelier in the Swiss hamlet Les Brenets, overlooking the Jura Mountains. “It was just to design a movement, to create something from scratch.” It is here, in a house that…

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Bulgari Recaptures the Crown for the World’s Thinnest Watch

Bulgari has its world record back. On Monday, the Italian luxury house with the Swiss fine watchmaking division reclaimed the record for the world’s thinnest mechanical wristwatch. The Octo Finissimo Ultra Mark II is 1.7 millimeters thick, 0.05 millimeters thinner than Richard Mille’s 1.75 millimeter RM UP-01 Ferrari, which two years ago snatched the record…

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