The Powerful And Beautiful Advancements Of Women's Watchmaking

Women's watchmaking makes powerful and beautiful strides at the crossroads of technical prowess, precious materials and savoir faire.

- Irene NG

VAN CLEEF & ARPELS
Lady Arpels Heures Florales and Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier

Paying tribute to the nature that has enthralled it since 1906, Van Cleef & Arpels unveiled two new watches from its famed Poetic Complications collection in 2022: Lady Arpels Heures Florales and Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier. The Maison was inspired by the floral clock concept (Horologium Florae), developed by Carl Von Linné, in his 1751 book Philosophia Botanica, which featured a hypothetical garden plan where flowers open and close at specific moments of the day to show the time.

“When we work on watchmaking projects, our goal is to use mechanisms to capture the poetry of the passage of time. And what could be more poetic than measuring time with the opening and closing of flowers?” says Nicolas Bos, President and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels.

In a reimagination of the flora world akin to a stroll in a flower garden, the two ethereal creations sit at the convergence of innovation and poetry—enabling time to be measured courtesy of a retrograde movement, flower opening module and minute window. Their three-dimensional dials poetically express the passage of time through the blossoming and closing of 12 corollas where the scenery is spectacularly renewed every 60 minutes.

Up to 166 elements are set in motion to bring the dial to life, courtesy of an in-house-developed module that connects each petal to the mechanism along with a flower opening process boasting three different sequences. Capping off the time-telling magic is the minute display, visible in a window on the side of the case.