Haute joaillerie and haute horlogerie marque Van Cleef & Arpels, true to its brand aesthetics, unveiled a plethora of stunning jewellery and high jewellery watches. Secrecy abounded in the brand’s offerings this year with secret watches being added to numerous collections. We sat down with Nicolas Bos, President & CEO of the maison, on the side lines of Watches and Wonders 2023 to discuss the timeless poetry of its high complications
Can you tell us about the Van Cleef & Arpels’ tagline “Poetry of Time”, which has been in use for a long time and has never lost its magic?
It is more than a slogan for us; it is a very short and simple translation of the identity of our brand, when it comes to watches. It means that everything is about stories and about an enchanting and poetic vision of life and nature that we try to translate into timepieces, or sometimes, objects. It is very relevant till today; it originated 15-20 years ago when we were rethinking what we could bring to the world of watchmaking that was already well populated with great brands. We needed a different proposition and it had to be a befitting representation of what Van Cleef & Arpels was about.
We found out that it was not so much about design, technique, special movements, or special craftsmanship. It was more about a vision of time, and time for a lot of watchmakers is about accuracy, precision, measurement of performance, which of course is associated with mechanics, sports, and other masculine interests. For us, time is about the passing of the seasons, and enjoying the long-time durations. It is about taking the time to tell a story. Or to read a book, or a fairy tale. This is at the centre of everything that we do in this field. We, sometimes, use very complex mechanical movements to tell a story; that is our Poetic Complications collection, and it is a very relevant approach for us. Sometimes, it is more about the jewellery component, which is what we are celebrating in particular this year. It is about how we can integrate a timekeeping element into a timeless piece of jewellery.
Unlike other brands that have a few iconic collections, almost all of Van Cleef & Arpels’ collections are iconic, with new editions being added; how are you able to do that?
It is actually quite difficult to define what is iconic and you can never really decide to create something iconic. That is something that only time will decide. For Van Cleef & Arpels, we are quite low-key and for more than a century that was the style that had been established and that style has translated into quite a number of designs. So, it has never been one single shape, design, colour, or design element. It is more of a style and a philosophy, and we do have some particular expressions, such as the Alhambra or the Perlée that are better known because they have been used in different creations through the decades. Bur when you think of watches, there is the Cadenas, there is the Ludo watch that we are adding to this year, the Pierre Arpels watch that has a more masculine design from the 1940s. There has been a lot of expressions along the years, and they are very consistent; this makes them easy to identify them as a Van Cleef & Arpels creation.
In the new Perlée collection, the button to set the time is at the back; how hard was it to incorporate that?
When we are creating jewellery watches, the design of the jewellery, the jewellery element, the gem-setting, and the Métiers d’Art – all of these come first. When we are working on the secret watches, especially, we do not want any traditional elements of a watch to be visible. For instance, hiding the crown is very important, which also drives the choice of the movement. That is why we have a movement with the time adjustment at the back and there is no need to rewind the movement. A quartz movement comes in very handy here as it is easy to incorporate it into a piece of jewellery without any visible component. This movements with the time-setting at the back is extremely convenient because you can build the jewellery around them; they disappear into the jewellery and they are very easy to operate. So, it is a great component when it comes to the design element.
The new Ludo watch, for instance, has only minor changes when compared to the original 1930s model; how hard is it for Van Cleef & Arpels going forward to maintain that kind of timeless identity for each watch?
We have historically had great designs in our maison and we are very happy that we have had strong creativity throughout the past decades. We always go back to our archives and sometimes there are some designs that we think are intriguing and a source of inspiration for something new. There are some designs that you look at and you know that there is absolutely nothing to change. Even though the Ludo was designed in the 1930s, it looks so perfect, so modern, and so pure that the only thing we tried to do is to keep the integrity of the original design. We did of course re-visit the way it is made, according to more contemporary standards. In the Ludo, for instance, the opening mechanism was not so sophisticated in the 1930s, the attention to long-time reliability, and the testing of watches was not as elaborate as it is today. There was the challenge of keeping to the original design, the original craftsmanship – all of these are traditionally handmade – but adjusting it to contemporary standards and expectations of the customer.
Van Cleef & Arpels has a huge archive of designs and watches; what is the process when the brand decides to relaunch a watch?
There is no hard and fast rule about this; for the Ludo, for instance, we have been working on new versions of the bracelets, going back to the archives, and looking at iconic designs of bracelets. In that category, the Ludo family was very inspiring as it is a composition of rectangular elements and conical shapes perfectly adjusted that created the feeling of a fabric, very supple. We started by interpreting the elements of the bracelet for pieces of jewellery and going back for the whole collection. There was this tradition of secret watches that we wanted to revive. It is not that there is a recipe that we apply year after year for different collections. It is really a case-on-case basis and it is more the creation guiding us, the design team, and the craftsmen in, sometimes, very new directions. Other times, it is more a revisiting, shaking off the dust from the archives and showing the past creations to contemporary audiences.
