Contemporary Icon

With its new Da Vinci collection, IWC Schaffhausen embraces the spirit of renaissance to the full, with a wide array of spectacular timepieces designed to appeal to women and men.

- Sean Li

In today’s watch industry, it can be a challenge to keep track of what is truly iconic. There are but a handful of watches that can genuinely deserve that moniker; more often than not, we find that it applies to a specific design that becomes inextricably associated with a particular maison. On occasion, it’s given to a collection of watches that, over the years, are part of a brand’s signature, linked over years, if not decades, with its design ethos. For IWC Schaffhausen, one such collection is the Da Vinci. What is particularly interesting though is that the Da Vinci has seen some very significant evolutions, leading up to the new design which IWC unveiled at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie in January this year.

Most collectors will be familiar with the design cues that inspired the latest Da Vinci collection. The round case with the movable lugs is utterly modern, but with an immediate visual link to the Da Vinci from the 1980’s. The history goes further back though, as the Da Vinci name originated initially in 1969, at the very beginning of the quartz era – yes, quartz! At that time, the Swiss watch industry was only just waking up to the advent of quartz movements, and the first Da Vinci, reference 3501, was equipped with the earliest iteration of a Swiss made electronic watch movement, the famous Beta 21. It also featured a hexagonal case shape, quite different from the one that today’s collectors would be most familiar with.