On December 11, 2014, TAG Heuer CEO Stéphane Linder announced the resignation of his position after only 18 months at the post. Having been at TAG Heuer for 21 years, Linder was elevated to his current position after previous CEO Jean-Christophe Babin relocated to sibling brand Bulgari. What is the master strategy behind this and other moves at LVMH as orchestrated by Jean-Claude Biver?
Art Basel Miami is not just contained to an indoor fair hall but spread around Miami’s South Beach, adding another colorful layer to this glitzy, at times glamorous, city in south Florida. Collins Park is also filled with colorful art. Take a look around Art Basel Miami with me now and see my original photography.
Audemars Piguet is much more than a sponsoring partner of the Art Basel fair; at the Miami Beach Art Basel exhibition, the brand from Le Brassus staged a spectacular exhibition of Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests right on the famed beach.
The high-frequency 6 Hz Audemars Piguet Escapement burst onto the block in more ways than one. First off, and probably most significantly, it is of the direct impulse variety. This latter element was only made possible thanks to improved precision now available in manufacturing combined with a two-hundred-year-old design inspired by Robert Robin’s escapement of 1791.
Making the nib of a fountain pen – the point of the instrument that directs the ink – does not differ much from working precious metals to be used as watch components, but it does entail a heck of a lot of work done by hand. The nib alone needs about 40 steps until completion; making a whole pen, including barrel, cap, feed and, of course the nib, takes about 200 individual steps.
Quill & Pad speaks with Guillaume de Seynes, member of the Hermès family and now managing director in charge of manufacturing and equity investments, to understand the brand’s corporate philosophies and history in watches a little better. De Seynes, previously in charge of the timepiece division, was the force behind supplier acquisitions such as the group’s stake in movement maker Vaucher.
While $450,000 (give or take a bit of change) isn’t a sum that even the richest among us is likely to scoff at, it’s quite possible that a more expensive belt buckle exists that I don’t know about. However, it’s very unlikely that any buckle exists that comes even close to the high levels of sophistication and engineering found in the Roland Iten R822 Predator. The diamonds really are just the icing on the cake.
Read about my recent purchase of the lovely Breguet Classique Chronométrie Reference 7727, which is not only the 2014 Aiguille d’Or winner of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, but also an excellent example of how classic can successfully meet high-tech and live to tell about it.