Security breaches of company databases have been in the news recently, but what if there was a spy who knew everything you were doing, including when you slept, ate, had sex, exercised, and worked – at what and for how long. A spy that monitored not just what you were doing, but how you were doing it, for how long, and how well. Have you really thought about what your fitness bracelet knows?
Over its eleven years of existence, Hautlence has experienced the tumult of both changes in investors and senior management. Hautlence co-founder and CEO Guillaume Tetu has been through it all. And he’s still smiling!
Vortex is the brand’s latest, and most complicated, watch post-MELB acquisition, and it’s success, or lack thereof, will be an important milestone for Hautlence as it looks to the future. So how is the watch?
It’s that time of year again when the list of watches competing in the next edition of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) is published. The list represents all of the watches competing in the first round of the competition from which the jury will preselect six in each category for a total of 72. Check out all of the competing watches as well as those we have written about here.
While the “she loves me, she loves me not” complication on Christophe Claret’s first ladies’ watch, Margot, is highly original and very poetic, it’s not the kind of thing a wearer is likely to use frequently unless in a particularly tempestuous relationship. In which case it might be better to lock the watch away until things calm down. Margot might be better suited, a watch featuring luminous butterflies and disappearing and reappearing declarations of love.
There are surely lots and lots of differences between the citizens of Mexico and Switzerland. These differences really come to light when you see national music styles played one after the other, though. Have a look at what we caught on video during the recent TAG Heuer introduction of its sponsorship of the Carrera Panamerica. What similarities and what differences do you spy through the music?
International timing competitions used to be the Formula 1 of watchmaking, and the watchmakers who prepared the high-precision (pocket) watches were treated like Formula 1 drivers. And that shouldn’t be surprising because until recently, the primary raison d’être of a timepiece was to tell the time. To tell THE time, not the approximate time. An error of 30 seconds day isn’t much . . . until you miss your train by 10 seconds.
I thought that the Mille Miglia was absolutely crazy and was amazed that an event like that could be held at all. Only in Italy . . . or so I thought until recently when I learnt more about the insane Carrera Panamericana.
The multi-axis regulator of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Gyrotourbillon has been fascinating watch aficionados since the introduction of the Gyrotourbillon 1 in 2004. In this video by The WatchesTV, Stéphane Belmont, international marketing and product director of Jaeger-LeCoultre, explains some of the thinking and history behind this groundbreaking line of timepieces.
“Whether collecting art or watches, when I fall in love with something, then I need to understand, I need to research deeply,” Mo Coppeletta explains. “You may have taste, but if that isn’t backed up with knowledge then it is superficial.” Coppoletta was wearing an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar Skeleton. “It’s my summer watch,” he commented. What else does he own and how did he get into collecting watches?
In 1985, Svend Andersen and Vincent Calabrese founded the AHCI: Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants. The aim was to help independent watchmakers survive at a time when large brands and quartz watches were dominating the horological world. In 1985 very few people even knew that there was such a thing as independent watchmaking, as advertising and exhibitions (of which there were very few) were far too expensive for them to participate in. Today, 30 years later, the AHCI boasts 35 members and four candidates. Not bad for an organization I once described as “like herding cats.”