An astrological phenomenon — on your wrist

Sometimes, making something simple is very complex. It’s an artistry the historic Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin has long mastered, its signature style concealing the elaborate complexity going on beneath its timepieces’ minimalist aesthetics. This direction has been taken to an extreme with the latest limited-edition Patrimony model, created in collaboration with the French designer Ora Ïto.

Ïto is one of Vacheron Constantin’s “One of Not Many” talents, handpicked to become collaborators and friends of the brand. He’s enjoyed a relationship with the house for five years and worked with the team to create a new model celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Patrimony collection.

This flagship line, honouring the grand watchmaking tradition, was inspired by two styles designed by Vacheron Constantin in 1957. The Fifties was a horologically progessive decade, characterised by the development of very slender, standout movements and uncluttered dials. The Patrimony collection was launched in 2004 in homage, each watch featuring the distinctive pared-back design and elegance typical of the range, along with the characteristic round case with slim bezel, domed dial with slim curved hour markers and curved baton-type hands. All this restraint is complemented by high watchmaking mechanisms, from three-handers to complications that include retrograde date and day versions. But so much purity is hard to achieve, requiring manual retouching and obsessive concern for detail.

All this is catnip to the 47-year-old Ïto who, as the face of the Patrimony collection, is a big fan — finding synergy with what he calls his “simplexity” concept. The ethos is “the art of making complicated things easy”. “A simple response to a complex problem, it is about being simple without being simplistic,” he says. “This is the concept behind all my work.” A sort of “minimalist purity” can be found in all his work as a designer, which he’s expressed in the fields of architecture, furniture, fragrances, phones and public transport, working with many prestigious international brands.

Ïto (whose real name is Ito Morabito) was fresh out of the Ecole de Création et Design in Paris when he scored audacious success to launch his career. He created virtual objects for famous brands without being commissioned. “Products” for Louis Vuitton, Nike, Swatch, Gucci and Apple went viral, attracting the attention of the public and the businesses. They could have sued, but his entrepreneurial chutzpah was acknowledged when he went on to be hired by other leading brands for real projects. In his approach to new challenges, he places the design of a pair of shoes and an urban mobility project on the same level — which can now include the design of a watch with a prestigious luxury house.

“My idea was to create a one-piece object symbolising the notion of ‘simplexity’. I wanted to unify the dial and the case, to ensure that the inside and the outside were one; this was achieved by extending the colour to the inside of the dial, which is golden like the yellow gold case,” Ïto explains. The 40mm yellow gold case housing a tone-on-tone gold dial embellished with numerous concentric circles gives an appearance of spreading, rippling waves, echoing the cambered dial surface.

The watch is finished by a burgundy calfskin strap which is punctuated by 1970s-style graphic motifs

It’s not merely a pleasing design. “I am really passionate about astronomy,” Ïto says, “and I was inspired by an astronomical phenomenon known as ‘the Baily’s beads’, a spectacle that accompanies an eclipse of the sun by the moon and consists of circular movements of light.” He wanted to incorporate this into the dial somehow, “so I worked closely with the Vacheron Constantin’s guilloché master artisan — he is the best guilloché craftsman in the world — and even though what he has done looks simple, that is far from the case. These circular motions shown on the dial absorb light and capture this beautiful astronomical phenomenon within the watch.”

Yellow gold is used throughout, giving the watch a subtle vintage feel, while the sapphire crystal caseback allows a view of the in-house self-winding movement, featuring high watchmaking details such as circular graining on the mainplate, and an openworked gold oscillating weight revealing the house’s Maltese cross motif. The watch is finished by a burgundy calfskin strap which is punctuated by 1970s-style graphic motifs that enhance the vintage vibe.

“In my work and my collaborations, I love what lies beyond the brand: its know-how,” Ïto says. “With Vacheron Constantin, this new Patrimony watch is the perfect illustration of the exchange between the designer’s imagination and the technical solutions made available by the watchmakers and the master guillocheur. The techniques they provided enabled me to capitalise on that know-how and take it even further.”

£34,000; vacheron-constantin.com

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