It was a conversation and collaboration that was three years in the making. But as Bvlgari’s Executive Director of Product Creation Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani will tell you, it was time well-spent. Bvlgari’s latest limited edition collaboration under the Octo Finissimo banner pairs its iconic record-breaker with the distinctive retro-futurist aesthetics of independent watchmaker Vianney Halter. In thus bringing together two distinct identities, the results are quite beyond the wildest expectations.

Bvlgari’s Executive Director of Product Creation Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani and Vianney Halter

For starters, the watch looks incredible. Four opaline white subdials share the spotlight on the Octo Finissimo Dual Time × Vianney Halter, tapping directly on Halter’s steampunk aesthetics of riveted portholes and asymmetric displays made famous in his early works such as 1998’s Antiqua. Two display local and home time, while another serves as a day/night indicator. The last is less porthole than a gauge-like display that marks the date. Hands are variously shaped, sculptural and flame-blued as per Halter’s signature for maximum contrast against ink black numerals and tracks. A discreet red arrow counts down the seconds.

Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Dual Time × Vianney Halter

Halter’s hallmarks are all over it, and yet, the watch remains distinctly Octo Finissimo, retaining its bold, sculptural lines and sharp edges. It is a careful balance where each detail straddles two worlds.

“There was no brief to start,” says Buonamassa Stigliani. “The idea was simply to find a way to work on a watch together.” A top-down brief that dictated the design would have been “suicide,” as he calls it, because in such a collaboration, “the key is to find a common path.”

Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Dual Time × Vianney Halter

In last year’s Bvlgari × MB&F Serpenti collaboration, the partnership had very clear-cut roles where Bvlgari designed the watch and MB&F produced it using its manual winding in-house movement. Fast forward a year, and the lines are deliberately blurred. “We wanted to work in a different way, to create a movement with the watchmakers around the idea of the Octo Finissimo.” And so, all bets are off.

Finissimo Meets Steampunk

From the beginning, Buonamassa Stigliani had his eye on the Antiqua. “I was a great fan of the Antiqua. For me, in terms of design, it was just amazing,” he shares. “But it’s something that was in the past, and we can make something different.”

Clearly, it was not simply a case of bringing two very different aesthetics together and mixing them up. As Halter points out, the Octo is a very futuristic creation while the Antiqua is out of time, with a steampunk base. As the discussion evolved, an idea slowly took shape and coalesced — “an Octo that is pure geometrical shape with a kind of disruptive approach about the counters,” says Buonamassa Stigliani.

The collaboration took three years and Halter worked directly with the Bvlgari team on all aspects of the watch

“It was the most difficult watch in terms of case and finishing that we ever made on the Octo Finissimo,” he adds. “In terms of the habillage for the case, it was something quite new for us because the Octo Finissimo was not built to have this kind of complexity. The idea to have three bezels on top of the dial with rivets, handmade and so many glasses and gaskets, plus the shape of the Octo — honestly, it didn’t help a lot. That was our biggest challenge.”

“The challenge on the Octo platform was to find the space, thickness and the power, to mix the dream and the technical constraints,” Halter elaborates. “It is always a challenge to create a complicated thing. From my side, it’s difficult to create a simple watch.” He laughs, “I think at Bvlgari, people now know that Vianney is not a simple guy, but nothing is impossible. It’s only time and work required.”

Getting the dials right proved one of the biggest challenges

Halter worked directly with the Bvlgari team to ensure that the manifold challenges that arose along the way were overcome. One of the key challenges, for instance, centered on the coherence of the colors on three of the dials. While the date disk was made in Le Sentier as it is part of the movement, the others were made in Bvlgari’s manufacture in Saignelégier, which focuses on the production of the dials, cases and bracelets. Made by different techniques using different tools, it was no easy task to ensure that all four white opaline colors match when they were not from the same base of material.

Elsewhere on the case, the rivets on the bezel were so small that it was impossible to screw them in with standard tools. Bvlgari had to develop specific ones to assemble them with a different technique. Even the integrated crown guards had to be redesigned. In order to keep a case diameter that is close to 40mm, the push-button mechanism had to be put within the push-button covers, the largest part at the base of each push-button, instead of housed in the case as it is usually done. The challenge there was to make the system fit and work within the extremely small area.

Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Dual Time × Vianney Halter is available in titanium and rose gold

“It was complicated,” Halter admits readily. “We worked a lot, but in the end, we found the perfect balance for us, between the goal and the work required to do that.”

And the goal was, as both Halter and Buonamassa Stigliani agree, “to make a watch that was 100 percent an Octo Finissimo and 100 percent a watch from Vianney Halter.”

In doing so, the record thinness that the Bvlgari has pursued for the Octo Finissimo over more than 10 years is a consideration but not a priority. “The idea to have the thinnest Octo Finissimo was not for the watch,” says Buonamassa Stigliani. “Our collaboration on the Octo Finissimo is always to have something that is out of the box, and the idea is to merge these two different worlds that have a lot in common but are still very far apart.”

Unlike previous limited edition collabs where the partnership focused largely on the design aesthetics of the watch, here it extends to the mechanics beneath the case, making it a first for the Octo Finissimo family. Halter worked directly with the Bvlgari team to develop the modules to integrate the GMT, date and day/night functions on the base caliber BVL 138.

The BVF 200 is built on the base caliber BVL 138

Bvlgari shared that the movement has already been built to have more torque than required, for the addition of modules, so adding the extra module was not an issue. And given that the energy consumption is well managed, power reserve is not compromised. The ensuing caliber BVF 200 measures 5.49mm, up from the 2.23mm of the BVL 138. Nonetheless, at 40.5mm across and a case thickness of 9.7mm, the watch maintains the svelte and streamlined silhouette of the Octo Finissimo.

Maintaining the streamlined proportions of the Octo Finissimo

Does this signal more complicated watchmaking collaborations on the Octo Finissimo platform to come?

“I would like to, but it’s not easy,” says Buonamassa Stigliani. “The Octo Finissimo movement is quite special and depending on the complication, the torque might not be sufficient. Vianney found a way to create an interesting module that talks about the Octo in a different way; it talks about him in a different way, and in this instance, the Octo platform was the right one.”

Two iterations of this very special collaboration are available: in sandblasted titanium paired with a matching integrated bracelet, and in sandblasted and vertically brushed rose gold with a brown alligator strap.

Tech Specs: Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Dual Time × Vianney Halter

Movement Self-winding Caliber BVF 200; 60-hour power reserve
Function Hours, minutes and small seconds; date; GMT; day/night indication
Case 40.5mm × 9.7mm; titanium or 18K rose gold; water resistant to 30m
Dial Four opaline rhodium-plated subdials
Strap Integrated titanium bracelet with folding clasp, or brown alligator leather with rose gold pin buckle
Price USD 80,000 (titanium) and USD 123,000 (rose gold), excluding taxes
Availability Limited edition of 30 pieces in titanium and 15 pieces in rose gold