In 1881, a nineteen-year-old named Achille Ditesheim hired six watchmakers and set up a workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The valley was filled with the sounds and sights of deep horological enterprise – an industry of watchmakers forging, assembling, polishing and setting into life the real meaning behind ‘Swiss Made’. Ditesheim named his enterprise Movado, from Esperanto: “in motion.” One hundred and forty-five years is a long time to keep moving.

In the watch industry, where heritage is constantly returned to and retold, longevity alone is just part of the story and Movado’s is not just of achieving nearly a century and a half. It is a design history dense enough to fill a museum. The anniversary campaign the brand has launched this year to celebrate its 145 years is inspired by its heritage. The campaign presents a multimedia excavation of ateliers, drawings, and prototype cases stretching across more than a century of Movado’s Swiss manufacture. Head Designer Eric Bonnet introduces the story.

“The Swiss made label is not just a mark of quality, it’s a commitment,” says Bonnet. “A Movado watch speaks to the contemporary world; it’s a balance between heritage and modernity with every Movado a bridge between the past and the future.”

Two new references anchor the 145 campaign. The Alta Centurion is the headline – an octagonal automatic chronograph with a Caliber 95A movement, 904L Durasteel case and integrated bracelet, azuré-finished subdials, and an optional solid 18K gold bezel. It is a beautiful timepiece presented in three variations, an automatic chronograph that expresses Movado’s ‘mastery in motion’.

Movado Alta Centurion

The second new reference is the Kingmatic.

Movado Heritage Kingmatic

The Heritage Kingmatic is not a watch that needs explaining to anyone with a serious interest in mid-century dress design. The original appeared in 1956, born of the postwar obsession with fitting complex automatic movements into cases slim enough to disappear under a shirt cuff. It was a specific moment: transatlantic travel was becoming aspirational rather than exceptional, the suited executive was a new cultural archetype, and watchmakers competed furiously to produce pieces that matched the era’s appetite for refinement without bulk. The Kingmatic was Movado’s answer. It remained in production for nearly three decades – testament to the longevity of enduring style.

From left: Movado’s new Heritage Kingmatic (2026) and Vintage Kingmatic (1962)

The Heritage Kingmatic revives the cushion-shaped case variant from 1962. The cushion – with its squaring-off of a round case, softened at the corners – wears beautifully. The curved sunray dial and convex applied markers are pure Movado vintage signatures that made the original so exciting to see revived. The dial carries that the warmth of sunray finishing: responsive to light and catching it in a way that changes with the angle of a room. The convex markers catch and hold that same light differently, giving the dial an added depth. It is considerate touches like this that reveal the heavy lifting of the Movado design department: choices that require a designer to understand why something works, and how it can be brought back to life in a way that is coherent and relevant to contemporary fans of watchmaking, without falling into sentimentality or becoming the servant of nostalgia. It is a dress watch that knows what it is. In a market that rewards considered, confident dressing, the Heritage Kingmatic delivers: well-made and historically grounded.

The curved sunray dial and convex applied markers are pure Movado vintage signatures that made the original so exciting to see revived

The 145 campaign touches on other watches of course including the Museum Watch which is Movado’s most famous timepiece. Nathan George Horwitt’s 1947 Bauhaus-derived design with its single dot at twelve o’clock, representing the sun at its meridian, anchors the story; the watch, a design icon, remains in the permanent collection of MoMA. The Heritage 1917, released last year, reaches further back into Movado’s Art Deco output, a period during which the house produced over 700 distinct case shapes in a single decade. The Museum Imperiale bridges the Museum Watch’s signature elegance with the visual language of the 1980s Imperiale line, that dotted bezel carrying the iconic dial motif outward to the physical structure of the case itself. Each piece is connected to something real in Movado’s archive. Movado has used the occasion of its 145 anniversary to inspire a conversation about its legacy.

Movado’s campaign opens inside the ateliers and design studios; its Swiss Made designation is a hallmark of quality and respect for the process and thereore every watch has ever been produced. It expresses the same values that Ditesheim established in the Jura valleys  many years ago, in 1881.