Drawing inspiration from the lavish world inhabited by 1940s leading ladies, the Velvet collection pulls off the seemingly impossible tour de force of retaining the DNA of an essentially masculine brand while creating eminently feminine watches. The collection is intended for the woman who knows what she wants!
Roger Dubuis came to this year’s
SIHH with some rather unexpected
props – a red carpet,
mannequins in long dresses, film projectors
– to recreate the atmosphere of Hollywood’s
golden age. The forceful and uncompromising
brand behind the Excalibur, with its exacting
standards of mechanical watchmaking, was
softening its edges to pay homage to the
fairer sex. Every year the watchmaker chooses
a different theme for the SIHH, and in the past
we have seen new models from the Squelette,
Hommage and Pulsion collections. This year, it
was the year of the Diva!
“A rather daring 100% feminine focus, but in
the tradition of the strong themes we like to
put forward at the SIHH each year,” explains
product designer Lionel Favre. The Velvet collection,
for women only, was quite naturally in
the spotlight, with a palette of very promising
new products. Right from its launch in 2012,
this line very rapidly became one of the
brand’s mainstays, well before the targeted
advertising campaign that came out this year.
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- Lionel Favre
OPTICAL ILLUSIONS
As Lionel Favre explains, the aim from a
design standpoint was to create a true jewel
on the wrist: “All too often in watchmaking,
women’s watches are just scaled-down versions
of men’s models. We wanted to create
a purely feminine collection. The inspiration
was the world of the Hollywood diva: cigarette
holders, the femme fatale, red carpets,
an entire world upholstered in velvet...”
Nevertheless, the greatest challenge would
be to successfully translate Roger Dubuis’
particularly trenchant aesthetic into a women’s
model. The watchmakers met the challenge in
a number of ways. Roger Dubuis’ signature triple
lugs are in evidence, but the centre lug has
a primarily decorative function. An interesting
optical illusion is created in the play between
the tonneau shape in the centre of the dial and
the round case. The Roman numerals are pulled
towards the centre, accentuating the impression
of depth. The applied hour markers at 12
o’clock and 6 o’clock are in contrasting gold.
FLORAL GRAND FEU ENAMEL
One of the stars of the collection this year
was of course the Blossom Velvet, produced
in collaboration with a master of grand feu
enamel. “The floral motifs that decorate the
dial are cut out by laser then joined together in
a hand-carved gold grid, which is set against a
mother-of-pearl backdrop. Each flower is positioned
with a central nail, which also holds the
enamel leaves in place,” explains Lionel Favre.
Roger Dubuis has also designed three unique
pieces whose stand-out feature is a dial also
executed in grand feu enamel. “The Blossom is
a tribute to Geneva and its floral heritage, but it
is also a reference to 1940s powder compacts,
which were often decorated with floral motifs.”
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- Blossom Velvet
CARBON COPIES
The Black Velvet is a foray into the domain
of unusual combinations of materials. For this
model, Roger Dubuis has done something completely
new: gems are set into carbon by means
of titanium claws (just last year the company
succeeded in setting gems into rubber). Carbon is omnipresent in this series: the case is made of
several layers of carbon producing a wave-like
texture. “We didn’t use this material for technical
reasons, as many other brands have, but
more for its slate-like appearance, its texture
and its lightness,” emphasises Lionel Favre.
In one model carbon is paired with Paraiba
tourmaline, an exceedingly rare stone found
in just one mine in Brazil, which has since
been closed down because of overexploitation.
Paraiba tourmaline is a thousand times
rarer than diamond, and six times more
expensive. “For the last thirty years there has
been a kind of ‘tourmaline rush’. These days
we are forced to look for old stock.”
Another version is set with diamonds. This is
also an interesting juxtaposition, as diamond
is in fact crystallised carbon. So the watch is
actually made out of carbon, set with carbon!
A third version in black spinels also makes the
most of the tone-on-tone mood, in this case
black-on-black. All three references, each set
with 66 stones, are available in a limited edition
of 88. The tourmaline model is priced
at CHF 59,400, the diamond-set version
CHF 39,900 and the spinel-set watch is CHF
34,600. They are all driven by an in-house
automatic RD821 movement.
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- Black Velvet
UNCOMPROMISING MECHANICS
In the same collection, but in decidedly more ‘mechanical’ vein, the Velvet Secret Heart also has a strong identity, with a bi-retrograde jumping date, cascading diamond-set half-bezels, and a third lug that appears to merge with the case. The RD821B movement was designed to perfectly follow the shape of the case. This exceptionally finished model is the first in the Velvet collection to boast a watchmaking complication, although it should be noted that Roger Dubuis has never shied away from producing haute horlogerie pieces for women – here given further legitimacy by the Poinçon de Genève.
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- Velvet Secret Heart
We should also mention the Velvet by
Massaro, produced in collaboration with
the Parisian shoe designer, who specialises
in gilded and pleated leather. “This texture
can be found on the strap he designed for
us,” notes Lionel Favre. “We then adapted the dial to ensure it went well with the strap,
notably by using yellow gold.” This model is
an extrapolation of the ideas we first saw
last year in the Velvet Haute Couture.
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- Velvet by Massaro
The designer is particularly proud of the Velvet
collection: “All the watches in this line have a
strong personality. Their complex cases, with
the optical illusion created by the round and
tonneau-shaped structures, demands a high
degree of creativity. These watches have character!”
Like their owners, one might almost
say. “The Velvet is for women who are very
sure of themselves, confident in their tastes and
not swayed by brand power. Our strengths are
without a doubt the design, but also the fact
that we offer genuine mechanical watchmaking
for women. We are young and we want to
make the most of that. We’re not bowed down
by the weight of our history – despite being
very mature from a technical point of view!”
