At the most recent edition of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG), often touted as the watch world’s awards equivalent of the Oscars, something interesting happened. Of the 20 categories, 16 prize winners were independent brands and makers. It’s solid evidence that in the realm of watchmaking, indies—which, make no mistake, have been on the rise for well over a decade—have made their mark.
It comes at a peculiar and possibly challenging time for the watch industry. Exports of Swiss-made timepieces in 2024, for instance, have dipped for the first time since its post-pandemic high. Tastes, and spending, are shifting across the board for luxury items.
What independent watchmakers offer, in this climate and environment, is a point of difference. Unlike the relatively behemoth establishment players that can have more than a hundred references in its catalogue and produce up to half a million pieces a year, indies and microbrands often have perhaps one or two models in production.
Precisely because resources and production are lean, there is a unique level of purpose and thought that goes into design. Mundane restrictions turn out, as they often do, to be fruitful for clarity and focus. The result is distinction. After all, why bother creating a watch that already exists? Here, Vogue curates a selection of five independent brands and makers of interest to keep an eye on.
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Trilobe
The principal layout and design of a watch dial has remained—for centuries—largely unchanged. At its most fundamental are two- or three-handers, or time-only designs, which tell the hours, minutes and seconds with three centrally mounted hands. The French brand Trilobe, which launched in 2018, approaches watchmaking with the concept of freeing the act and design of time-telling.
To wit, the brand’s name is a reference to its signature hands-free design that inverts the established convention on which of the parts on the dial move. Instead of central hands that indicate time, Trilobe watches have up to three concentric rings that rotate anticlockwise. A trefoil, the brand’s logo, acts as the indicator. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the brand envisions the act of reading the time on its watches, rather poetically, as moments and opportunities in a day to halt haste and slow down.
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At this year’s GPHG, two Trilobe watches from its L’Heure Exquise collection were nominated under the ladies’ complication and men’s categories. L’Heure Exquise marks the introduction of a moonphase complication to the brand, which replaces the smallest disc that would otherwise display the march of the seconds.
The ladies’ complication model in particular is quite special. Watches are often acquired or gifted to mark special occasions, and L’Heure Exquise Secret (pictured here) expresses that notion with beautiful poetry. It can be customised with a location, date and time of your choosing. Trilobe will then look into and obtain the position of the stars in the sky at this exact time and place, and use that information to create a custom ‘sky map’ design. Exquisite indeed.
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Anoma
The topic of shapes looks set to be an area of creativity among watchmakers. For founder and creative director Matteo Violet-Vianello, who has worked at Sotheby’s and at the online horology platform A Collected Man, the doldrums of playing by the same rules led to the creation of Anoma and its debut model, the softly curved and triangular A1.
I once questioned an established creative director of a major luxury house, on the topic of shapes in watches, why not consider a triangle? The response was a scoff, which perhaps underlines precisely the impetus and effect of the rounded triangular silhouette of Anoma’s A1. Beyond a circle and a square, a triangle is one of the most simple geometric forms, which Violet-Vianello enriched with references to a master of mid-century design.
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The soft angles of the A1 are in fact inspired by a 1950s free-form table by the architect and designer Charlotte Perriand. Violet-Vianello discovered the table at an antiques gallery, kickstarting a love for the design. Even the prosaic serial name of the A1, Violet-Vianello shares, is a nod to the naming convention of the Le Corbusier (LC) furniture series that Perriand co-designed. A personal piece that stokes his love for these mid-century designers? An LC1 armchair that he keeps in his living room, which he says is “a perfect balance of distinction, purity and timelessness in my eyes”.
As a watch, the organic curves of the pebble shape are enhanced by a discreet asymmetry in the dial’s orientation as well as a completely smooth and rounded case. Its gentle sculptural sense combines the biomorphic and geomorphic for a result that’s sensually talismanic. An anomaly in the market, to be sure, but enchanting for its difference.
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This year, Anoma will embark on establishing two lines: a Core Collection and Experiments. The former, to cement the A1 as a permanent model with variants, such as an upcoming grey A1 Slate model, which will be introduced in the first quarter of the year, with contrasting polished and guilloché finishes on the dial. In the latter, a canvas for experimental projects. “These will be more concept-driven, creatively bold and produced in limited numbers,” Violet-Vianello shares.
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Toledano & Chan
The last year saw the renaissance of shaped watches, which must have been gratifying for the independent brand Toledano & Chan. Founded by conceptual artist Phillip Toledano and automotive design grad turned watch designer Alfred Chan, this is a brand that has made a larger splash than normally thought possible with just one model. Enter the B/1, a timepiece with a brutalist shape that harkens to the sculptural and experimental silhouettes of watches in the 1970s.
Developing the B/1 took Toledano & Chan three years. In 2021, its founders were struck by a desire to make something beautiful and unusual. The market at the time had two poles. On the one hand, classicism and re-editions from the big brands. And on the other, rather more baroque design from the independents. There was room, perhaps, for a shape that would be as sobering as it was striking.
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The brand cites two design inspirations for the B/1: the iconoclastic Rolex King Midas designed by Gérald Genta and broadly the integrated bracelet style of the ’70s as well as brutalist architecture. The gamble on the zeitgeist paid off when Audemars Piguet also released its own shaped novelty, a remastered watch with a brutalist-inspired form from its archives. Entirely different beasts altogether, but glowing evidence at least that Toledano & Chan had smartly, and rightly, taken the measure of the moment. A little more evidence: the first and original 175-piece run of the B/1 was completely spoken for in 45 minutes.
The latest and upcoming developments to the B/1 will explore materials and shapes in unexpected ways, says Toledano. There is, for instance, a special piece—the B/1M meteorite—a prototype model created for auction house Phillips that features a case and dial entirely crafted from meteorite, with plans to launch a variant of this meteorite model in a limited run. As for the core B/1 in stainless steel, the brand is developing an updated model with a black mother-of-pearl dial, a re-engineered bracelet and a new asymmetrical crystal that continues the brutalist, Breuer building-inspired design language of the brand.
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Kudoke
Here’s an impressive titbit: the German watchmaker Stefan Kudoke was recognised and certified at the tender age of 22 as a master craftsman. Stefan, who has also worked and trained at companies such as Glashütte Original, Breguet, Blancpain and Omega, broke out on his own in 2008 to found his eponymous brand.
Independence for Kudoke is a matter of creative freedom and the means to stay true to its values. The brand is still family-run, with just five employees, and thus has control, says Stefan, over its processes, from design and construction to engraving and finishing.
Stefan mostly made his name with the Kunstwerk line of skeletonised timepieces with intricate hand-engraved details until 2019, when the watchmaker introduced Handwerk, his second collection underpinned by traditional watchmaking techniques. Key to the development: Kudoke’s in-house Kaliber 1 handwound movement, inspired by the handworked construction and finishings of English pocket watches.
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Kudoke’s Handwerk collection is classically minded, and the Kudoke 3, its third model, riffs on the conventions of how time is displayed. The minutes are left traditional, with a central hand and indications on the chapter ring. The hours, however, is where the German watchmaker has shaken things up. Rather than the chapter ring, Kudoke fashioned a fan-shaped three-part plate, and a smaller, hour hand with three arms of different lengths. The design looks puzzling at first glance, but it’s simple mathematics really: the divisibility of 12 hours by three means there is always at least one hand on the hour plates, and two as the time transitions between the numbers at the ends.
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The Kudoke 3 recently took home the GPHG prize in the petite aiguille category for watches priced between 3,000 and 10,000 Swiss francs. It’s the second GPHG award for the brand, which won in the same category in 2019 for the Kudoke 2—chops that have set it on an ascent among collectors. “Winning the GPHG twice for our Handwerk models has certainly brought more attention to this collection,” Stefan comments. The result is that roughly four fifths of the brand’s production is dedicated now to the Handwerk collection, while the hand-skeletonised and engraved Kunstwerk line remains an integral part of the brand’s craftsmanship and identity.
Last year, the retailer Sincere Fine Watches added Kudoke to its line-up of brands in Singapore and Malaysia. “As a small family-run brand, we don’t have a dedicated sales department and can’t be everywhere ourselves,” explains Stefan of why the brand works with authorised retailers around the world. “While our watches are made in a small workshop in Saxony, Germany, this method helps us share our craft with a global audience, bringing our work closer to those who appreciate fine independent watchmaking.
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Dennison
Before the Swiss ruled the scene, the English were the leaders in fine horology. Several of the most influential inventions and developments—the first marine chronometer, the lever escapement, the co-axial escapement among them—can be attributed to English makers. That heritage is a little forgotten these days, but Dennison, founded in 1874, is one such dormant name that has been recently revived.
Dennison made its name as a speciality maker of watch cases, supplying cases to brands such as Omega and Jaeger-LeCoultre. With its relaunch, the brand is debuting with the ALD collection, named for founder Aaron Lufkin Dennison, with mid-century-inspired cushion-shaped cases—a fortuitously trendy style.
To create the ALD collection, Dennison recruited the acclaimed designer Emmanuel Gueit—the man behind the Royal Oak Offshore by Audemars Piguet, who worked on the Rolex Cellini, and designed for brands such as Piaget, Tiffany & Co., Harry Winston, Hermès and Zenith.
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The polished cushion case of the ALD takes inspiration from mid-century Dennison designs, including some of the brand’s final production runs when it ceased production in the 1960s. Offered in stainless steel or PVD gold, and with a svelte 6.05mm thickness, it has a touch of old world elegance that can be dressed up and down.
The collection debuts with two main dial designs: a sunray finish in black, blue or green at $673; and an attractive array of natural stone dials, at $948, with aventurine, lapis lazuli (pictured), malachite and tiger eye among them.
Vogue Singapore’s January/February ‘Resolution’ issue is available on newsstands and online.
