Van Cleef & Arpels gets kissy-kissy with the new Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux watch collection
In the first watch launch since Van Cleef & Arpels left Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH), after the annual fair of January 2018, the French maison unveiled six new Pont des Amoureux novelties to represent this passing of time at a special gala in Paris in October.
Van Cleef & Arpels is leaving no morsel of time unexplored with its new collection of Pont des Amoureux timepieces: the design’s mechanised lovers are not only meeting at midnight, as with its 2010 original, but also at midday and across the four seasons. A further addition, the Pont des Amoureux Midnight for men, is scheduled for a later launch.
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“When we first designed the [Ponts des Amoureux] it showed one specific location of Paris at night. Actually it's not a specific location but kind of a mix of the bridges. So it's kind of a small fantasy vision of Paris,” says Nicolas Bos, creative director and chief executive officer of Van Cleef & Arpels.
“And now we thought, we would also like to see the passing of time and the passing of seasons; that it would be interesting to see the different colours for day and the different seasons.”
The original Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux shows a young lady carrying an umbrella and a young man carrying a rose behind his back, making their way across the imaginary Bridge of Lovers. The man’s movement across the dial indicates the minute, while the fairer gender’s movements trace the hour. They meet in the middle at midnight (and midday) and share a tender kiss before the retrograde kicks in and they move back to their places at each side of the dial.
The same replays in the new night edition – also with the white gold casing and diamond bezel – with some subtle changes: the retrograde hour and minute markers are now slightly further apart, allowing the moon to look down at the lovers from higher in the sky.
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The day edition takes on a more rosy hue with a rose gold casing and diamond bezel and a pinkish-violet grisaille enamelling dial that shows a different background setting. Both editions come with interchangeable full pave diamond bracelets and alligator leather straps.
Similarly, the four new seasonal editions show the lovers meeting on the same bridge but set against different backgrounds. The Pont des Amoureux Printemps (spring) watch comes in rose gold with a full pave bracelet set with diamonds pink, mauve and purple sapphires. The Eté (summer) version takes on a more yellow hue with a white gold casing and a bracelet of diamonds, yellow sapphires and spessartite garnets.
The Automne (autumn) edition features the orange shades of the season, with a yellow gold case and a bracelet paved with diamonds, yellow sapphires and garnets; Hiver (winter) is presented with white gold case with a bracelet of diamonds flecked with sapphires.
All the novelties house a self-winding mechanical movement with a retrograde and on-demand animatron module, developed exclusively for Van Cleef & Arpels, and are available in an initial limited numbered edition of 200 pieces each. An on-demand animation button at eight o’clock on the case means that you can now make the lovers kiss whenever you press it instead of waiting for the usual 12 hours.
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“We noticed that our clients who wear this watch enjoyed all the variables but they also liked to play with it and show it to friends. We’ve been doing the on-demand function [for other watches] since 1927 and we thought it would be great to integrate this function for the lovers,” says Bos.
In a nod to Van Cleef & Arpel’s mastery of whimsy, the best kept secret is that after the lovers kiss, another animatron of both the young man and the woman lean in for a second secret kiss within the mechanism of the watch, only known to the craftsmen, unseen even by the wearer of the watch.
“We started discussing this about two or three years ago when everyone was talking about tourbillon and double tourbillon, speed and accuracy, very masculine mechanics. When they asked me what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to see if we can design a watch that could go extremely slowly and would be multiple representations of time for Van Cleef & Arpels, which is nature and the result of nature,” says Bos.
“To make something go very slowly but keeping the accuracy, and especially if it's something that's quite heavy, is as challenging as a two-hour mise-én-scene that’s beating very fast like a tourbillon. So it started to be interesting because that became a true story of watchmaking associated with our expression.”
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The response to the previous Pont des Amoureux watch and Van Cleef & Arpels’ other Poetic Complications showed that the appeal of the maison’s whimsical timepieces wasn’t only limited to women, which has led to the first Pont des Amoureux Midnight timepiece for men.
“We’ve had quite a few special commissions from men who love the story but wanted something a little more masculine, or maybe to have a different story with different geographical backgrounds or characters,” says Bos.
“We did something called Poetic Wish a few years ago which comprised two watches that kind of answered each other, which was quite appreciated by clients. So we decided to explore how it would look if we did the Pont des Amoureux in the midnight case and changed a few details to make it more masculine.”
Besides the Pont des Amoureux, Van Cleef & Arpels also unveiled three new novelties for both its Charms Extraordinaire and Extraordinary Dials collections, and eight high jewellery secret watches.
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