You never expect anything less than utter beauty from Van Cleef & Arpels, and this principle extends to the watches that it crafts. This year, the Parisian maison is returning to a celestial theme in the form of the new Midnight Jour Nuit Phase de Lune. A remarkable creation, this timepiece combines not just aesthetic sophistication but a mastery of complications—two, in fact, that coexist seamlessly in the watch.
The first is the Jour/Nuit complication, in which a display with a sun and moon motif rotates once every 24 hours to track the cycles of day and night. The sun on the watch rises, quite literally, together with sunrise in real time, and the moon on the watch makes its appearance as night falls in real life. The golden sun motif is crafted with a radiating guilloché pattern that evokes its solar heat and energy, while the moon is made from placid, graceful white mother-of-pearl.
The second complication is overlapped on the Jour/Nuit disk. The mother-of-pearl moon is not just a static motif—it is also a moonphase display. Surrounded by acrylic traced stars, the moon turns on its own rhythm according to the 29.5-day lunar phases. Rather like the graceful movements of celestial bodies, each on its own path of orbit and rotating on its own time, the dance of sun and moon play out on this creation by Van Cleef & Arpels.
On the dial, the maison’s innovation department worked with starry Murano aventurine glass, giving it a deep colour and a sparkling bronze-tone effect to recreate the beauty of a night sky. And to complete the picture, a ‘shroud’ of guilloché mother-of-pearl masterfully painted from black to white. The gradient creates a trompe l’oeil effect of looking out into space with the curve of our planet on the horizon, and the sun and moon rising and setting.
Two more secrets hide among these awe-inspiring complications. A pusher on the side of the case animates the Jour/Nuit display, sparking a 10-second turn of the disc on demand so you can enjoy the beauty of sun and moon regardless of the time. The second secret is hidden on the back of the case. There is an engraving in white gold that evokes the surface of the Moon. The Earth, stars and two planets are painted in enamel on sapphire crystal, and positioned on a guilloché background above the oscillating weight. Even on its rarely seen side, Van Cleef & Arpels offers a view from the Moon—a romantic perspective in every way.
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The July/August 2026 ‘Audacity’ edition of Vogue Singapore is available online and on newsstands.
