This year, Revolution turns 20. Two decades of chronicling watches, people and ideas have given us a front-row seat to a remarkable story: how an age-old craft has both preserved its soul and reinvented itself for the 21st century. To celebrate, we’ve chosen over 100 names and milestones that, for us, define the era so far. From leaders to watches, you can see the whole list here.

Marc A. Hayek — grandson of Nicolas G. Hayek Sr., the irrepressible visionary credited with rescuing the Swiss watch industry from collapse and forging the Swatch Group into a global powerhouse, and nephew of Nick Hayek Jr., its current CEO — has always been something of an enigma to me.

The Hayek name is steeped in charisma; Nicolas Sr. filled rooms with his presence. Marc, by contrast, has always preferred watchmaking itself to life in the spotlight. I first met him properly during my original stint at Revolution in 2013, when Wei Koh invited me to join his Baselworld Blancpain appointment. As brand CEO, he was shy, humble and palpably self-effacing, with a charming reluctance to be the center of attention. Even then it was clear: Marc Hayek would always speak through watches rather than words.

Marc A. Hayek, President & CEO of Blancpain

So when I arrived in Le Brassus in early November and was greeted not by a gatekeeper or a handler but by a beaming Marc Hayek himself, I knew instantly that what lay ahead was different. He doesn’t beam without reason. What we were about to see mattered. And as it turned out, the watch waiting behind the next door, the Grande Double Sonnerie that was eight years in development and decades in the dreaming, was the defining technical creation of his tenure so far at Blancpain. If the Hayek family history has always been written in bold strokes, this was Marc’s chapter: quieter, more introspective, yet no less monumental.

Blancpain Grande Double Sonnerie in white gold

The story began a decade ago, when Marc Hayek set an audacious brief. He didn’t simply want Blancpain to create a grande sonnerie, no matter how rare and exalted the complication is. Instead, he wanted to redefine what a wrist-worn chiming watch could be. The watch would need to play two distinct melodies instead of one; it would have to play the full Westminster sequence on the hour; it had to run with four hammers and four gongs, tuned not for simple tones but for actual musical notes; and above all, it must be wearable and robust, not a safe-bound showpiece. “He wanted something different, something unique,” one of the senior engineers told me. “Not just a grande sonnerie. That would be too easy.”

Details of the dial, the four hammers can be found between the 9 to 12 o’clock positions

Assembling the gongs

Hayek himself echoed this sentiment with characteristic clarity. “This project took eight years from concept to completion,” he said. “But we didn’t have to rethink the approach, because the brief remained unchanged from the very beginning: to create a grande sonnerie that would open an entirely new category of timepieces — one capable of playing two distinct melodies and chiming the four quarters on the full hour, with wearable dimensions.”

It is worth spelling out what this means in practice. In grande sonnerie mode, the watch strikes the hour count, then plays the appropriate portion of the selected four-note melody as each quarter passes, and at the top of the hour it follows the hour strike with the full four-bar melody. In petite sonnerie mode, the hour count is struck only on the hours, followed by the full four-bar melody, while the quarters are struck at each quarter, marked solely by their respective melodies without repeating the hour. The minute repeater functions on demand, sounding the hours, then the relevant quarter melody and finally the minutes whenever the wearer chooses to activate it. The owner may choose between the Westminster tune or Blancpain’s original composition at any time, switching instantly with a pusher on the caseband.

Behind this, a selector linked to the case controls a cam that defines the three positions: grande sonnerie, petite sonnerie and silent. A four-tooth star mounted on the cannon pinion releases the mechanism at each quarter, lifting the main lever that drives the racks. In grande sonnerie, the cam allows the hour rack to read the hour snail whenever the star triggers a release, so the hours are always repeated before the quarter melody. In petite sonnerie, a dedicated lever blocks the hour rack at the quarters but leaves it free on the full hour; an hour cam on the same star raises this lever at the top of the hour, allowing the hour rack to fall and strike the hour once before the melody. In silent mode, a silencing lever lifts the main click away from the ratchet mechanism, the heart of the sonnerie drive, so all passing strike is disabled, while a separate path keeps the minute repeater available as long as there is sufficient energy in the strike barrel. But ultimately, the main event is the ability to switch between two different melodies.

From the outset, the team knew this would not be a modular watch. The movement would have to be fully integrated with the sonnerie, the perpetual calendar and the flying tourbillon all sharing a single mainplate. This was not just philosophical purity; it was practical necessity. A stacked construction would have made the watch unwearably thick.

Close-up of the 4Hz flying tourbillon

“Blancpain’s philosophy has always been to avoid shortcuts,” Hayek explained. “The ambition was never to take the easiest road, but the most demanding one, the road that allows the beauty of mechanics to fully express itself. Integrating the sonnerie, the perpetual calendar and the flying tourbillon into a single mainplate was a natural extension of that mindset. And it was the only way to achieve the remarkably compact and wearable profile of 47mm diameter and 14.5mm thickness, dimensions that would have been impossible with stacked modules.”

Blancpain Grande Double Sonnerie

The result is astonishingly wearable. As Hayek has insisted from the outset, “I wanted a grande sonnerie that could be worn. A watch must live on the wrist, not in a safe.” Despite 1,053 components for the movement (out of a total of 1,156 including habillage) and unprecedented acoustic architecture, the watch sits at 47mm by 14.5mm, which is bold but not unwieldy, grounding its complexity in everyday possibility. It can be personalized, even at the level of melody, provided the mechanical constraints are respected.

Despite the fact that only two watches can be made per year, there is no elitism here in allocation — provided the potential buyer has the CHF 1.7 million starting price demanded. As Marc Hayek said, “You shouldn’t need to own 20 Blancpain watches to own this one. If you have passion for the project, that is enough.”

So, what does this achievement mean for Blancpain’s future? Hayek is unequivocal: “This watch does not mark the end of a project; it marks the beginning of a new era for Blancpain. While it is the most complex creation in the brand’s history, it is not a standalone achievement. The Grande Double Sonnerie opens the door to a new chapter in which Blancpain will express its full watchmaking capabilities more visibly and more consistently.” He paused before adding, “It is a starting point.”

Tech Specs: Blancpain Grande Double Sonnerie

Movement: Caliber 15GSQ fully integrated hand-wound mechanical movement; 13 patented innovations including dual quarter-rack architecture, silent magnetic regulator, variable-geometry gold gongs, gold acoustic membrane, fully integrated retrograde perpetual calendar and redesigned under-lug corrector system; 1,053 components including 67 jewels; 26 gold bridges with 135 hand-finished interior angles; power reserve of 96 hours (timekeeping) or 12 hours (sonnerie in grande mode)
Functions: Hours, minutes; grande sonnerie with two melodies (Westminster and Blancpain); petite sonnerie; minute repeater; flying tourbillon at 4Hz with silicon balance spring; perpetual calendar (day, month, leap year, retrograde date); power reserve indicators for both the movement and the chiming mechanism
Case: 47mm × 14.5mm; 18K red or white gold; acoustic membrane beneath the bezel; water-resistant to 10m
Dial: Openworked 5N gold; black-rhodium sunray indexes; serpentine retrograde date hand; twin subdials for day and month with leap-year indicator
Gongs and Hammers: Four variable-cross-section red-gold gongs; four hammers with micro-adjustable striking stops; laser-tuned frequencies; silent magnetic regulator governing tempo
Strap: Alligator leather strap in choice of colour; gold folding clasp
Price: Starting from CHF 1.7 million (excl. taxes)