A quarter of a century ago, the house of Chanel introduced a revolution in watches. It was a dream that Jacques Helleu, the late great artistic director and tastemaking eye of Chanel, took over seven years to realise. This invention was the J12, the first masculine timepiece from Chanel, and the first luxury watch in the world to be sheathed entirely in glossy black ceramic.
Time has been exceedingly rewarding to the J12. Its design identity has proven enduring— inspired as variously by the kineticism of J Class sailing yachts slicing through the waves as the stark geometry of Le Corbusier architecture. In fact when Arnaud Chastaingt, the present-day director of Chanel’s watchmaking creation studio, ‘reinvented’ the J12 in 2020, he found that his predecessor had nigh on hit perfection. The ground had been set and Chastaingt instead resolved to conduct an almost surgical refinement of details.
And then there is the material matter of crafting a watch from ceramic, which had not been invented or possible in 1994 when the merest idea of the J12 was conceived. It took the maison seven years to make this creative vision a reality, that of a glossy black timepiece as elegant and beautiful as it was resistant and sporty. These days, luxury watches cased in high-tech ceramic are so popularised as to be matter-of-fact—yet Chanel was its audacious pioneer.
Visually, nothing cuts to the core of the J12 quite like its achromatic look. First released in 2000 in glossy black, and with the addition of white three years later, this monochrome palette has been the collection’s graphic signature, a strand of the house’s colour codes and rather like a striking photo negative. That is why it is momentous that this year, on the 25th anniversary of the collection, Chanel has introduced J12 Bleu, a nine-piece capsule collection of J12 models dressed for the first time in blue matte ceramic.
“I wanted a blue that has a rigorous elegance, a blue that is nearly black or a black that is nearly blue.” Arnaud Chastaingt
The J12 Bleu collection adds a shot of colour to the universe of this timepiece. Black and white are, in a way, non-colours. Blues, on the other hand, are more mutable, sensitive and open to characterisation. Sky blue is sweet, tender, youthful. Klein blue is imposingly vivid, with a tinge of the cerebral. Navy blue is laced with discipline and rigour. But the colour of the J12 Bleu is closer to midnight, a sophisticated shade that is as quiet as it is assertive.
There is both art and science to selecting a definitive colour. “The final choice,” says Chastaingt, “was like an epiphany. I wanted a blue that has a rigorous elegance, a blue that is nearly black or a black that is nearly blue.” That explains the allure of its shade, which evokes either devastatingly refined tuxedos or the mysterious depths of a night sky. Developing this colour, which is always a massive technical undertaking in ceramic, took the Chanel watch manufacture five years.
A key distinction of the J12 is that it is a masculine watch, not necessarily a men’s watch. The difference is subtle but critical because it underpins and echoes how Gabrielle Chanel’s designs turned gendered conventions on its head. Jersey, a comfortable material used for men’s underwear, cut and sewn as jaunty women’s sportswear; gentlemen’s jodhpurs, which she cut for herself so she didn’t have to ride a horse sidesaddle; and tweed, which she took out of men’s clothes for the Scottish countryside and transformed into the signature Chanel bouclé suit. Little twists to the norm, all of them, yet with outsized effects—not unlike a finely calibrated dose of blue.
Vogue Singapore’s April ‘Movement’ issue is out on newsstands and available to purchase online.
