Editor’s Note: This story on bespoke watches originally appeared in Volume III of B.H. Magazine. For access to future issues, subscribe here.
Far from content with the typical trappings of the upper class – steel sports watches, five-star hotels, commercial flights – the world’s most affluent individuals don’t just want the best of the best: they want what nobody else has. With more than two decades of experience in the luxury industry, and five years as the Global Director of High Jewellery at Piaget, Christophe Bourrié is a man who knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the desires of the 1 per cent.“
There are two types of people in the world,” Bourrié tells B.H. “People who are reassured because they look like each other, and people who think differently.”
For the latter, luxury watchmakers are meeting the demand for individuality with enthusiasm. Many brands have created or expanded teams dedicated to customising timepieces and producing piece unique (one of a kind) watches, allowing clients to order anything from bespoke engravings and personalised enamelled artworks, to designing entirely unique watches that begin with a sketch. “Every unique watch has a story,” adds Bourrié. “The first reason to get one is to say, ‘I’m different’, and the second point – if you dig a little deeper – is a story about that person.”
There is a historical precedent for such tailor-made, luxury offerings, of course. In the 20th century, watchmaker Patek Philippe allowed its best clients to order bespoke watches to exacting, record-breaking specifications. Likewise, Cartier created its first Trinity ring (now an extensive and enduring collection) because influential French poet and playwright Jean Cocteau requested a ring be made after dreaming about the rings of Saturn.
For today’s clients with unlimited money, and the patience to match, unique watches push the craft of watchmaking into new territory. One such client worked directly with Vacheron Constantin to create the world’s most complicated pocket watch, not once but twice.
“At the beginning of the 20th century, we saw the arrival of the great watch collectors,” explains Christian Selmoni, Style and Heritage Director at Vacheron Constantin. “The two most famous collectors were Henry Graves Jr. and James Ward Packard, who competed to own the world’s most complicated watches.
“An equivalent collector of our time is William Berkley, who requested us to create the most complicated pocket watch in history, complete with a perpetual Hebrew calendar. The watch we created was the Ref. 57260 with 57 different complications, but while it was in development, he asked us to create a second, even more complicated watch with a perpetual Chinese calendar,” adds Selmoni. This second watch would become the Berkley Grand Complication.
“It’s an example of when our most exceptional collectors challenge us to push the boundaries of watchmaking, in exactly the same way Graves and Packard did,” says Selmoni. “They were challenging the watchmakers in the 1920s and ’30s, and Berkely is doing the same a century later.”
Today, these creations are produced in the brand’s dedicated Les Cabinotiers department, and depending on the complexity, “can reach at least seven figures.”
At its core, the customisation of luxury watches is an expression of individuality, personal taste, and storytelling – who they are and where they’ve come from. Unlike the financier’s love for Rolex or a rapper’s enthusiasm for Richard Mille, this motivation doesn’t come from wanting to belong to a certain community. It comes from a more confident place.
“These are the kinds of people who know luxury very well,” explains Bourrié. “They already have all the luxuries you can imagine, but they want something more. And that something is customisation.”
Matthieu Le Voyer, Chief Marketing Officer at Jaeger-LeCoultre, shares a similar sentiment. Of all of Switzerland’s top watchmakers, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso model offers a rare canvas for creativity, at a comparatively affordable entry point, featuring a rotatable case that can be engraved or enamelled at a client’s request.
“For many, customisation is a means of expression, a way to reflect their personal taste, passions, or significant life moments within their timepiece,” Le Voyer tells B.H. “It is an exciting proposition to create something truly one-of-a-kind, crafted to one’s exacting specifications.”
At Jaeger-LeCoultre, clients can request engravings or enamelled artworks (or a combination of the two) on the caseback of their Reverso watches, which is the only model such modifications can be made to. These designs can range from simple engraved initials or motifs that cost around $500, to more complex engravings where pricing begins at around $2,000. Alternatively, micro-masterpieces crafted in enamel that require dozens of hours of painstaking work can cost clients tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of dollars.
Piaget offers more than ten thousand different versions of its Altiplano Ultimate Concept that can be ordered, as well as a new customisation program for the Andy Warhol collection where clients can select the precious metal used for the case, a range of different hardstone dials, and the strap colour.
For their Very Important Clients (VICs), Piaget also has a tailor-made program where a truly unique watch can be created from start to finish according to the client’s specifications, similar to that of Vacheron Constantin. Such masterpieces from Piaget often enlist the talents of independent artisans, such as master enameller Anita Porchet, or feather artist Nelly Saunier.
As one might imagine, the prices of Piaget’s creations reflect their technical sophistication and artistic brilliance, meaning the customisable Altiplano Ultimate Concept is officially “on request,” but is understood to cost more than $600,000. The Andy Warhol collection is slightly more approachable at around $80,000, however, for clients interested in a piece unique watch from the brand’s tailor-made program, money should be no object, as prices begin at around $1.5 million.
Understandably, most watchmakers do not proactively advertise their most exclusive customisation services, preferring to communicate the possibilities directly with long-term clients who have already demonstrated their love for the brand. Especially when it comes to piece unique watches, brands are careful about what they will agree to create and who they will create it for, as they are keen to avoid diluting their core collections or creating a glut of piece unique watches on the pre-owned market.
“There are a few parameters to commission a piece unique, ”explains Piaget’s Bourrié. “First of all, there are some models that we would be reluctant to do a tailor-made watch with because a unique piece is always a big deal. If it’s a true unique piece, we can never make it again. As a company, we need to be very careful with this program because we can never do it again. It is a restriction for the future.”
As a result, it’s impossible to walk into a Piaget boutique off the street and request a $2 million piece unique watch. “It’s not just a matter of the amount of money you have spent already or are willing to spend on a piece unique, it’s more about the love you have for Piaget as a brand,” adds Bourrié.
Going by @pbluxury on Instagram, PB is a collector who knows more than most about this need to communicate his passion for a watchmaker. Among the watches in his collection is an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Double Balance Wheel Openworked with a customised winding rotor on the movement – a customisation offering that is rarely discussed in Audemars Piguet boutiques.
“I met the Audemars Piguet CEO, François-Henry Bennahmias, out of the blue in Geneva,” PB recalls. “I was at the La Réserve Genève Hotel with a friend, and after overhearing our conversation about my favourite watch from his brand, Bennahmias turned around and joined our discussion.”
The impression PB left was lasting. A few months later, he received a call that informed him the watch he desired was ready to be collected – despite a multi-year waitlist for the specific model. Not everyone will be lucky enough to meet a watch brand’s CEO to convey their enthusiasm, but it’s further evidence that passion – more than money – matters most at the zenith of watch collecting.
After buying the watch, PB saw another collector’s Audemars Piguet with a customised rotor and asked a brand executive about creating one for his watch. At the time, it cost around $10,000 and a few months to complete, before PB took delivery of his customised 18k-gold rotor that featured his 3D initials and the engraving “love life.”
“For me, it’s a piece that I will not sell, and I’ve had some crazy offers for it,” explains PB. “Like stupid offers, but it’s something I will not sell.”
While the record-breaking requests of Graves and Packard are no longer a focus for Patek Philippe, it remains a watchmaker that will create piece unique watches for its VICs, like Ed Sheeran. In an interview by John Mayer for Hodinkee, Sheeran revealed that Patek Philippe agreed to his request to replace London for his hometown on a 5230G World Time.
“This, I think, is the coolest watch I own,” Sheeran explained. “I asked if they could replace London with Framlingham because that’s my home, and wherever I was in the world I could always click [the dial] around and see what time it was in Framlingham.”
Collector Roman S (@timesromanau) takes a more supportive approach, preferring to purchase from independent workshops where customisations are possible through direct relationships with the watchmakers themselves. The now-celebrated California-based watchmaker Joshua Shapiro, of eponymous brand J.N. Shapiro, is one such example of independent excellence, who Roman built a relationship with before deciding to buy a watch.
“I reached out to Josh in 2018 when he had just shown his very first Infinity watch publicly,” Roman tells B.H. “We exchanged a few emails and calls, and I eventually asked him if he’d considered making a version of his watch in steel and a smaller size. From there, we started talking about getting the proportions right for the dial, and while I don’t know my novice input had much influence on him, I think he appreciated having a collector’s eye on what he was trying to do.”
“I ordered a piece, and when it was being made, I asked if the engraver could add my initials next to the serial number on the movement. Since then, I think I’ve only seen two or three other examples with initials engraved, and I believe mine was the first, so it made the watch a lot more special for me.”
For Roman, it’s less about the cachet of a brand name or the price of a watch and much more about who the watchmakers are and what they’re trying to do.
“Over my years of collecting, I’ve fallen in love with the stories of the watchmakers themselves, and it became much more interesting to understand them and what they wanted to make,” explains Roman. “I’m strongly drawn to the early pieces a watchmaker makes because, as a collector of relatively modest means, that’s when I can have the biggest impact on someone’s horological career. Patronage sounds too grandiose a word for what I’m doing, I’m just happy to support the watchmakers I like, wherever I can.”
All luxury is, by definition, an excess of the necessary. It exists to elevate our everyday experience, to provide a break from the banal, and to remind us that life is special. Customised watches serve a role within this framework, as a wearable talisman that reminds us of who we are and what life can offer.
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