In the ’30s, the art deco design movement spun off a different style. Streamline Moderne took its inspiration from advances in transportation like great ocean liners, with a look of sleek, aerodynamic modernity. Where art deco dealt in angled geometry as decoration, Streamline Moderne was all about the sweeping, uninterrupted line and gentle, rounded corners. That period of time, as it happens, is significant in the horological history of Swiss brand Audemars Piguet. It was one of a handful of Swiss makers to really embrace a novel complication that reimagined how time could be displayed on a wristwatch: the jumping hour.
Rather than hands that sweep in a circular arc to tell the hour, the jumping variant (heure sautante in French) involves rotating circular discs revealed on the dial by a window. It’s a simple idea that’s taking hold of watchmakers once more in this century—the latest being Audemars Piguet, which has introduced the Neo Frame Jumping Hour, a timepiece that looks like nothing else in its contemporary catalogue. This gorgeous oddity didn’t come out of nowhere. Says Sébastian Vivas, the brand’s museum and heritage director: “This new timepiece is a nod to Audemars Piguet’s pioneering role in developing the first jumping hour wristwatches in the 1920s.”
What’s changed? “Back then, the glass was so fragile that it had to be protected by metal,” explains Vivas of the whole point of enclosing the wrist-side-up face of a watch with only small apertures for show. Now, in the case of the Neo Frame, the entire front of the watch is crafted from black sapphire—centre stage, no hiding. What hasn’t changed? That seductive, vintage Streamline Moderne aesthetic, expressed in a pink gold case flanked on each side by eight fluted gadroons, and which taper, resolvedly, into curved and pointed lugs.
The Vogue Man Singapore 2026 ‘Pursuit’ edition is available online and on newsstands.
