True To Form

Director of Product Development Anthony de Haas on the A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Chronograph and why they didn't release it as their first vision of sports-luxury timekeeping

- JONATHAN HO

VENTURING INTO UNCHARTED TERRITORY in 2019, A. Lange & Söhne entered the sports elegance segment with the launch of its first integrated bracelet timepiece, the Odysseus. This year, the brand followed up with its first self-winding chronograph in the same platform.

The digital counters were a Lange signature, as was the chronograph complication; there was a lot of mixed reaction when the market first saw the Odysseus. With two brand signatures in one timepiece, the Odysseus Chronograph would have made it a lot easier for people to understand what Lange’s vision of a sports watch was… The polarisation is the biggest compliment we could have had. Look, we started working on this six years ago and it actually began alongside the time-only Odysseus. Could we have started with the Odysseus Chronograph? Yes, of course, we would have had a big “wow” moment. But if we released the normal version after, people would have felt “yeah, they just scaled the Odysseus down to time-only”. We want some excitement and we did it how we did it because it was the best way.