Classic With A Twist

Not your average classic watch, Vacheron Constantin’s Historiques American 1921 raises a glass to freedom, creativity and individuality.

- Celine Yap

When Christian Selmoni mentioned, over the Zoom conference we were having, that American 1921 is regarded as an antique watch today, I experienced a brief moment of cognitive dissonance. Not to his point, of course. The style and heritage director of Vacheron Constantin was making perfect sense.

But when you’re looking at a timeless, elegant wristwatch-like the American 1921—smooth like a pebble, with a peculiar yet no less rakish off-centred dial—you’d easily understand why I was struggling to call it ancient.

Selmoni says, “To really understand the American 1921, we have to put ourselves in the spirit of the ’20s, the Roaring ’20s. A time of total creativity, total freedom, it was all about extravaganza. This was also the era of the dandies, so the watch with its unusual off-set dial could also be an object of fantasy.”

Indeed, American 1921 is exactly 100 years old now. Yet this watch, which has been described in some corners of the collector world as the “ultimate time-only Vacheron Constantin”, has never looked more current, thanks to a welcome facelift in 2008—an event that Selmoni recalls. “I was a young product director then. I remember presenting the watch at SIHH [Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie] and we were quite surprised by the amazing response we got,” he says.