It’s human nature to be ambitious. The desire to reach beyond our ken and push past our limits is almost intrinsic, and describes the arc of humankind. The ancient Greeks, in their myths and language, had a word for this: hybris. Before it evolved into ‘hubris’ and took on the connotation of arrogance, hybris meant something closer to excess as opposed to temperance. It described the tendencies of mortals to reach greater heights of honour and victory, brushing close as they did so to the divine.
That explains the name of the Hybris collection by Jaeger-LeCoultre, which was introduced in 2003 as the Hybris Mechanica. Embodying this spirit of audacity, it’s where the Swiss watchmaker pushes past technical limits of the day to craft some truly extraordinary and mindblowing timepieces. One of these is a Reverso Hybris Mechanica that, somehow, manages to fit 11 complications onto four distinct watch faces in one model.
In 2014, Jaeger-LeCoultre expanded the scope of the collection to introduce Hybris Artistica, creating a meeting point between high mechanics and the astounding handcrafted savoir-faire of its Métiers Rares artisans. It’s a pursuit of superlative excellence in the artistic sense. Think of it, perhaps, as analogous to the functionally redundant yet creatively necessary field of haute couture. Jaeger-LeCoultre’s mainline collections offer a world of luxury and fine craftsmanship, while its Hybris Artistica is the pinnacle and halo of what it can achieve without restraint.
One of the newest standouts to the line is the Reverso Hybris Artistica Calibre 179, a follow-up to a 2023 model that introduces an art deco-inspired design of black lacquer. Though the signature Reverso design was invented for sporting practicality, the timepiece has evolved as a canvas for high watchmaking. One of the Reverso’s signature complications is the Duoface, present on this model, which displays a different time zone on the front and verso dial.
One more signature complication, albeit taken to an extreme, is the multi-axis Gyrotourbillon. The Reverso Hybris Artistica Calibre 179 features a fourth-generation rendition of the Gyrotourbillon: a 123-component wonder crafted with an ultra-light titanium inner cage, and which rotates on two axes at different speeds. The inner cage makes a zippy revolution every 16 seconds, while the outer carriage turns to mark the 60 seconds that make up a minute. It’s a dazzling dance of mechanical wizardry to watch, and because it’s mounted as though it were free-floating, an easy sight to get lost in.
The artistic element of this remarkable timepiece is subtle and tasteful in the rare way it accentuates the watch’s horological allure. Its pink gold plates and bridges have been laser-cut to create 200 hollows, which are filled in and lacquered by hand, then polished down so that the ‘frames’ of gold and ‘fills’ of lacquer look like a seamless piece of marquetry. It’s a rare skill: only three master craftsmen in Jaeger-LeCoultre are capable of it and they dedicate themselves to lacquering a timepiece (this model is limited to 10 pieces) from start to finish. With beauty and craft like this, it’s little wonder that hybris, that age-old compulsion to dream bigger, continues to seduce us so.
The March 2026 ‘Ignite’ edition of Vogue Singapore is available online and on newsstands.
