In 2022, Sylvain Berneron, an industrial designer by training, began sketching a gold watch with an unusual asymmetric silhouette — a bit like a circle that had been put through a wringer. After showing the sketch to a handful of potential suppliers, he named it the Mirage, because the piece seemed so unlikely to get made.
“The only way I could make it happen was to pay 100 percent of my order in advance — 750,000 Swiss francs with zero clients,” Mr. Berneron said by phone last month from the Swiss city of Neuchâtel, where he lives and where his brand, Berneron, has its headquarters.
Generally known as a shaped watch, an industry category describing any timepiece that is not round, the Mirage takes its cues from the design of its hand-wound mechanical movement, visible through the case back.
“I was taught that good design is form following function,” Mr. Berneron said. “That’s why I designed a movement that would not be restricted. I let the wheels take the space they needed and once I had the gear train, I decided to go around the gears and drew the case shape around the movement.”
Before Mr. Berneron introduced the 38-millimeter model last year, he hoped he could sell 12 pieces, each at 55,000 Swiss francs ($64,980). The watch, now 61,000 francs, has since sold many multiples of that figure. “We are facing 100 times the demand of what I am able to produce,” he said. “We are currently sold out until 2029.”
Berneron’s success — as well as that of other shaped pieces released this year, including the triangular Anoma A1, the asymmetric B/1 by Toledano & Chan and the 34-millimeter stone-dial version of the Mirage that Berneron introduced in August — is emblematic of a sea change in luxury watchmaking. For the better part of the past three decades, the market has been dominated by classic round tool watches, a category of wristwatches designed for rugged outdoor activities like aviation, deep-sea diving, mountain climbing and scientific exploration.
Now, the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction.
“New and vintage watch buyers are moving away from the dominant watch style of the last 30 years, professional watches for sport, and toward art and design watches in which the timekeeping may be secondary,” James Lamdin, the founder and vice president of the vintage dealer Analog:Shift, said on a recent phone call.
Risk-Taking Design
Current events in the watch industry have intensified the swing. Over the past decade and especially during the first two years of the pandemic, buyers all seemed to want the same thing: steel sport watches on integrated bracelets, a style epitomized by the Rolex Daytona, Patek Philippe Nautilus and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. Soaring demand collided with limited availability at retail, creating a frenzy in the secondary market. In early 2022, some models commanded as much as five times their retail value.
That same year, the invasion of Ukraine in February and the crypto collapse in May triggered a correction in secondary market prices — which have been in decline ever since — and a corresponding change in tastes.
“The last few years have largely been about collector conformity: ‘You don’t have a Nautilus? You’re not cool,’” said Asher Rapkin, a co-founder of the online retailer Collective Horology. “Now it’s about individuality. That’s why we’re seeing a resurgence in vintage Piaget and super funky dress watches from the ’70s.”
Silas Walton, the founder and chief executive of A Collected Man, a dealer of rare pre-owned and independent watches in London, said a guiding influence on collectors and contemporary watchmakers has been the legacy of Gilbert Albert, a Swiss designer famed for his asymmetrical and triangular case designs for Patek Philippe in the 1950s and early 1960s.
“But the ultimate shaped watch for me will always be the Cartier Crash, the king watch,” Mr. Walton said. “It’s the definition of iconic shaped design that remains incredibly original, beautiful and cool.”
One of Cartier’s most playful designs, the Crash is a Dalí-esque model introduced by its London flagship in the 1960s. Vintage and modern versions are in high demand, as are scores of more obscure references manufactured by the brand, whose tagline, “The Watchmaker of Shapes,” reflects its dominance in the category.
Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s image, style and heritage director, said that shaped timepieces — dating to the 1904 introduction of the square-case Santos — come naturally to the house because it is, first and foremost, a jeweler.
“Having the eyes of a jeweler, I think, is essential to understand the freedom of conception that Cartier has enjoyed since the beginning,” Mr. Rainero said.
While Mr. Rainero said he does not know exactly how many shaped watches the brand has made since its founding in 1847, the number is well over 100. They range from the rectangular Tank to the oval Baignoire, with scores of fantastical shapes in between.
Take the rare Cartier Cheich, for example. Named for a piece of cloth traditionally worn around the head by the Tuareg people of the Sahara, and with a case shaped like the head scarf, the watch was created in the 1980s as a trophy for the Dakar motor race. When a gold model came up for auction two years ago, the vintage watch dealer and collector Eric Ku couldn’t resist buying it for $1.1 million.
“It’s the story and the shape,” Mr. Ku said in a recent phone interview. “It’s not a classically beautiful watch, but it’s funky and iconic and beautiful in its own way.”
One could say the same thing about the signature double ellipse case introduced by the watchmaker Daniel Roth in 1989 and revived last year by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, the watchmaking factory owned by Louis Vuitton. (Its parent company, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, had acquired the Daniel Roth brand in 2011, as part of the deal when it purchased the Roman jeweler and watchmaker Bulgari.)
A combination of a square and a circle, the double ellipse case is so central to Mr. Roth’s vision that when Louis Vuitton introduced the new Daniel Roth Tourbillon Souscription in yellow gold, the only thing it changed about the case was its thickness, now 9.2 millimeters, down from the original 11 millimeters, said Matthieu Hegi, the artistic director of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton.
“The case shape is the unique footprint of the brand, it could not have been altered,” Mr. Hegi wrote in an email.
Brutalism or Bust
Another example of how shaped watches have captured the spirit of the time came in May, when Audemars Piguet introduced the [Re]Master02, an unexpected limited edition with an asymmetrical silhouette and a Brutalist design based on a 1960 timepiece from its archives. At 41 millimeters, it is bigger than the original, but retains its angular, somewhat polarizing design.
“This watch has been welcomed just like the Royal Oak was in 1972 with many lovers and a few haters,” said Sébastian Vivas, Audemars Piguet’s heritage and museum director, on a recent video call. “But the good news is that there is no indifference.”
Appreciation for the sharp lines and minimalism of the Brutalist movement — an architectural style that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, distinguished by simple, block-like shapes and the use of raw concrete — has been a sub-theme of the shaped watch revival. Just two weeks before Audemars Piguet unveiled the [Re]Master02, Toledano & Chan — a microbrand founded by the artist and watch collector Phillip Toledano and the watch designer Alfred Chan — introduced its B/1, a wristwatch that paid tribute to the Rolex King Midas and other integrated bracelet watches of the 1970s.
Mr. Toledano said that he and Mr. Chan shared a love of Brutalist architecture and decided to design a $4,000 steel watch that recalled the asymmetric frame of a window in the Breuer building in New York City.
“We sold out in 45 minutes,” Mr. Toledano said. “The landscape four years ago when we started talking about the watch is not the landscape now. It never occurred to us that it would be such a success.
“I’ve had enough Rolex Submariners,” he added.
Joshua Blank, the founder of the microbrand Papar Watch Co., also eschewed traditional sport watch styling in favor of a Brutalist design when he created his new Anillo GMT, a round-face watch with an octagonal bezel inspired by the folds of a paper airplane.
“I was in a mall in Mexico with my daughters and my wife, and my wife was folding paper airplanes with the kids, and this idea of folded paper just kind of came to me,” Mr. Blank said. “In Mexico, there’s a tremendous amount of Brutalist architecture. And I thought, ‘I would love to do a watch that brings that Brutalist feel.’”
It is clear that shaped watches, Brutalist-inspired or otherwise, are having a moment. But how long will that moment last, especially now that trends whipsaw faster than ever?
William Rohr, the founder of the independent brand Massena LAB who is best known in the watch world as William Massena, offered a cynical perspective. “There’s always been a fashion around watches, but now you have social media and these dealers/influencers are basically pushing this stuff like there’s no tomorrow,” he said in a recent phone call. “Some of the shaped watches are fun, but are some going to die? Absolutely. Because at the end of the day, only a few things remain and these are the classics.”
Gai Gohari, a vintage watch dealer in New York who specializes in unusual and shaped watches, did not disagree.
“In Italy, they’re called ‘orologio forma’ — form watches,” said Mr. Gohari, who is from a village near Milan. “All those shaped watches were available for great prices and great values. And then as the market heated up for the Royal Oaks, the Nautiluses, these watches were a great opportunity to start collecting. Two years ago, we started to see a renaissance of individualistic taste and style and that’s where we are. They’re super popular. But I think we’re reaching the peak.
“The next decade is the ’90s,” he added. “It’s the rebirth of Swiss horology, classic design revised in a modern key, with a lot of focus on movements. We’re totally back to round watches in the ’90s.”
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