Nine times out of 10, the narrative a watchmaker crafts about its creations will be built around a romantic image of precision, functionality and utility. Van Cleef & Arpels is one of the rare exceptions — a watchmaker who decided to leave out the precision and utility, and focus on the romantic image alone. Van Cleef & Arpels’ timekeeping tagline is “the Poetry of Time,” and it’s more than a pleasingly evocative marketing tagline; it’s an accurate summation of an approach to watchmaking that’s quite unlike anything else out there.

Who better to explain than CEO Catherine Rénier, who is well versed in how precious objects and poetry interact: “Time, of course, is poetic. But what does that mean for us? It means emotions, stories, inspirations and moments of life. On something like our famous Pont des Amoureux, we talk about love. But we’re also very inspired by the cycles of nature. You may be familiar with our Enchanted Nature watches that tell the time through the opening and closing of flowers. There’s always a view on time that is related to moments, and to the cycle of life, more than precision.”

Catherine Rénier, Van Cleef & Arpels CEO

Rénier continues to explain that, beyond the poetic impetus, the famously traditional world of watchmaking has evolved significantly over the last century: “Watchmaking has evolved more broadly. In the last century, watchmaking was a necessary tool to tell time, to travel and the like. It was a quest for technical prowess. It was an expression of ingeniousness through precision, with things like very thin calibers. There are plenty of inventions that were triggered by a need. Minute repeaters were created so people could tell time in the dark, and so on. Then, new technologies meant that watches today are not necessarily objects in the same way. They have evolved into objects of emotion and passion. They are still objects of technical prowess, but more for the sake of the craft, and respect for the history and the heritage and how they continue.

“With that in mind, this is where the timepieces of Van Cleef & Arpels come in very naturally. They require technical expertise, they require technical innovation, and they take years to make. But they go beyond the usefulness of the time and the tool that the watch was; they add in the emotion, the story and the craftsmanship on the dial. For other watchmakers, perhaps the story is not there in the same way as our watches, but they create for the sake of expression and expertise in design and watchmaking, rather than for precision and usefulness. [This approach] has evolved. I think in this global evolution, our timepieces have an important role to play, because they show another way to look at time, and they offer another way to build a meaningful relationship between the owner and their timepiece — through emotion, beauty and an expression of craftsmanship.”

Love Story

Nowhere is this poetry more fully expressed than on the Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux Automate, the evolution of the story of the lovers on a bridge that Van Cleef released earlier this year. Rainer Bernard, the watchmaker’s Director of Research, explains how this singular watch is exemplary of the brand’s story-centric approach to product design: “The Pont des Amoureux is perhaps the most well-known love story that we have in watches, and it came out in 2010. We thought, it’s time to open a new chapter, which is just what we did with the Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux. This time, we saw the lovers meet in a guinguette environment, which is like a street cafe, with tables and music — it’s a feel-good environment where you meet people. We saw the lovers there, and in the background, there are two stars, indicating the time. It took us four years to develop this watch.

Rainer Bernard, Van Cleef & Arpels Director of Research and Development

Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux Automate

“What drives everything is the story — this isn’t just something we say for marketing. We really start with the story. For example, in the Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux, we began with the concept of the lovers dancing, holding hands, with stars in the background to indicate the time. This is really how it started. From this beginning, we have someone from the creative team, from the technical watchmaking side, and someone from the métiers d’art side: we all meet and work out how to tell this story. The objective is to create something together — no one is more important than another, and we give room to other areas of expertise, because only when we work together can we express ourselves.

“This is very clear when you see the final watch. Take, for example, the movement. Not only is the movement very complex, but it’s important for it to take up as little space as possible, to leave room for the finishing. There are so many elements on this dial; sky, stars, clouds, buildings, gold cobblestones, and of course, the lovers. It all takes space, so we try to condense the mechanical side of things, to give space to the other elements, and hopefully get the perfect blend of high watchmaking, high jewelry and métiers d’art.”

Clearly, this approach has something going for it, as the Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux Automate is as captivating as its predecessors, and that’s saying something.

Locked In

Another bright star in the Van Cleef & Arpels firmament is the Cadenas. These distinctive jewelry watches might not have the same level of direct narrative storytelling as something like the Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux, but they’re still remarkable, poetic objects. Rainer Bernard, explains the history and symbolism of this padlock-inspired timepiece: “It was born in 1935. It was made at the time by Renée Puissant, who was the artistic director and the daughter of the maison’s founders, so there is a direct connection through that watch, which we still make today, to the founders. At that time, she was very inspired by what was happening in Paris; it was the end of the Art Deco period and the beginning of what is known as modernism. It was a time when Marcel Duchamp took pieces out of everyday life for his ready-mades and transformed them into art. And this inspired us.

Van Cleef & Arpels Cadenas

“If you look at Cadenas, it’s a bold shape: the rectangle, the inclined dial, the tube, the buckle. All this speaks the language of modernism. The inclined dial speaks to speed, which was important in design at the time. The chain talks about industrialization. The watch has a style that stays modern. We’ve done a lot of variations over the years. We’ve done leather bands, we even made some in wood in the 1970s, and of course, we’ve set it with different stones. There’s one with a large, square, mirror-shaped bracelet. One day, we tried to modernize the fundamental design. We started to change the size of the tube, the thickness, the dimensions. After many months of testing and prototyping, we found one we liked and that we were happy with. Then we said, ‘Wait a minute,’ and we took our new version, compared it to the original Cadenas, and we discovered we’d gone all the way around; it was fundamentally the same.

“So we didn’t actually change anything in the end. The only thing we’ve really done is update the mechanical system for holding the buckle closed; it’s a little more subtle, which again is part of our approach of hiding the techniques behind the scenes. This unchanging nature is the beauty of it.”

It is truly a testament to the power of Van Cleef & Arpels’ poetic approach to time and design that Cadenas, a jewelry-like timepiece inspired by a padlock and chain, is as charming today as it was 90 years ago.

Tech Specs: Van Cleef & Arpels Lady Arpels Bal Des Amoureux Automate

Movement Self-winding in-house mechanical movement with an automaton mechanism; 36-hour power reserve Functions Retrograde hours and minutes with on‑demand animation
Case 38mm; 18K white gold set with diamonds; water resistant to 30m
Dial Grisaille enamel with rhodium-plated characters Strap Interchangeable shiny blue alligator; rhodium-plated white gold pin buckle set with diamonds
Price Upon request

Tech Specs: Van Cleef & Arpels Cadenas

Movement Swiss quartz
Functions Hours and minutes
Case 14mm × 26mm; 18K yellow gold set with sapphires and diamonds; water resistant to 30m
Dial Rhodium-plated white gold, set with diamonds
Strap 18K yellow gold snake chain bracelet
Price Upon request