These Watches Are Not for You

Max Büsser and his band of revolutionaries made products they themselves wanted-and built a huge fandom on the way.

- Andy Hoffman

Let's get one thing straight: Maximilian Büsser, the creative force behind the red-hot MB&F brand, isn't making watches he thinks you'll like.

He already did that. For about seven years, the son of a Swiss diplomat and a mother from Mumbai was head of the watch division at luxury jeweler Harry Winston Inc. Büsser revived the unit-increasing the staff tenfold-built a new production facility and launched the Opus line, a series of collaborations with the world's best watchmakers in the early 2000s.

Büsser had recognition, fame (at least of the watchmaking kind) and money. And he was miserable.

"I was very good at creating products I didn't like but I thought people would like," he says. "I hated myself."

The death of his father, with whom he'd endured a cold and distant relationship, forced a reckoning.  He went to therapy, where he considered what a life free of regrets would look like, one he could leave with a legacy he'd be proud of: technologically surprising and playful objects with no compromises that were, at least to him, art.

The result is a company called MB&F, for Max Büsser & Friends. It produced a mere 30 watches in its first run and 125 the next, generating a small but deeply dedicated fan base. Its timepieces look nothing like the sober round dials of stalwart Swiss brands Rolex and Omega.

A visible oscillating balance spring is a signature feature on many of the oversize and yet refined models, whether they're LM "Legacy Machines" that provide cutting-edge innovations to classic watchmaking or the radical HM "Horological Machines" with unconventional case shapes inspired by space travel, cars and sometimes animals. (Previous models have resembled everything from panda bears to frogs.) MB&F has designed and produced an impressive 20 different calibers or movements in its 17 years.