Halfway Point

Frederique Constant’s Hybrid Manufacture is the sincerest and, dare we say, most authentic effort in marrying mechanical finesse with smartwatch functionality

The term “smartwatch” has slowly morphed into something of a trigger word in the ideation rooms of the Swiss watch industry. Is it the next step in watch evolution or just a spanner thrown into their gilded cogs by Silicon Valley gremlins? Any way you slice it, they had better come up with an effective rebuttal, having learned the hard way (re: the Quartz crisis of the 1980s) that new technological forces aren’t to be trifled with.