Franck Muller
Franck Muller: The Vanguard Gets Crazy at WPHH 2019
I have been a huge fan of Franck Muller’s Crazy Hours since it was first introduced in 2003. The timepiece turns standard timekeeping on its ear by reshuffling the hours on the dial, using a special patented complication that ensures the precise jump every hour, while the minute hand keeps time in the traditional way. The result is a unique and fun way of keeping track of the passing time.
How did Crazy Hours come about?
Though Franck Muller was already considered a master of complications, he wanted to do something different. “One thing I was thinking about was that all the information shown on traditional complications could be read off your computer,” Muller remembers. “As such, I wanted to create a type of watch that offered an experience you could not have with an electronic device. This watch must evoke emotion; it must remind you that watches are iving objects and not soulless electronics. In order to do this, I had to examine the fundamental concepts behind time.”
During a vacation in Mauritius where Muller chafed under all the rules imposed upon the guests at a swanky hotel, Muller came up with Crazy Hours, a watch that breaks all the rules.
“I thought to myself, I hate rules,” he says. “But, in many ways, time itself is a rule. It is imposed on man. I wanted to create a watch that had no rules but that always displays the right time regardless. And I called this watch Crazy Hours.”
Crazy Hours is still a best-seller for the brand, and it has gone through a number of variations over the years, including a tourbillon.
For the 2019 World Presentation of Haute Horlogerie (WPHH), held at same time as SIHH at the Watchland SA headquarters in Genthod, Geneva, Franck Muller will present a new Crazy Hours for men and women in the Vanguard collection. The masculine version is in a black carbon case, its indications in yellow, along with a yellow crown and a yellow stitched alligator-rubber strap.
The new Vanguard Crazy Hours are just two of the spectacular timepieces the Franck Muller Group will be unveiling at the WPHH, starting January 14, 2019.