ILLUSTRATIONS BY STUDIO NIPPOLDT; FINNBOG PETURSSON (WINDEREN)GONE WITH THE WIND
Until the 1960s, a water
source accessible through
the cellar of the original
Zenith manufacture in Le
Locle supplied drinking
water to an old-fashioned
fountain that stood before
the entrance of the
building. Around the same
time that Zenith launched
the calibre 5011 K of its
marine chronometers, the
fountain was demolished.
The underground water,
still dripping from its
source, became
undrinkable. For a time,
Zenith toyed with the idea
of filtering it at source and
bottling its own branded
Zenith Water. But Swisscantonal authorities
opposed the idea, and
Zenith returned to making
chronographs.
As a new eco-friendly era
opens today, plans are being
laid to stop the water from
going to waste. By 2020,
Zenith hopes to put into
place a system to capture
and filter the 400 litres of
water that currently flow
every hour, in order to
supply its industrial
washing machines and
sanitary facilities. The plan
would not only help to save
water but would ensure a
“greener future” for Zenith.
The water fountain, in turn,
is unlikely to be rebuilt.Zenith took a
summer break in the
Greek isles. The Defy
Classic Mykonos Edition,
which launched in June, is
made of ceramic in Aegean
blue; the skeleton
construction allows a view
of the windmills of Mykonos
on the sapphire caseback.
Its movement is a remake of
Zenith’s automatic Elite.
Limited to 25, the Mykonos
Edition is only available at
Greek retailer GOFAS.Romain Jerôme’s
10-piece ARR AW Marine
collection of chronographs
also features the blue of
the Aegean Sea and the
distinctive white windmills
of Mykonos on the
oscillating weight. All 10
pieces will be sold
exclusively in Mykonos, at
the Kessaris shop in town
and in the new village at
Nammos Beach.As sponsor of
Art Basel in
Miami Beach in December,
Audemars Piguet will
present a site-specific
“sound” commission
produced by Jana Winderen,
at its VIP lounge designed by
Fernando Mastrangelo.
Carl Suchy & Söhne has
produced a new ad campaign
for its Waltz Skeleton N°1
that revisits the era of
Viennese Modernism. The
campaign’s contemporaryArt &
Collaborationsimages, the work of an
artists’ collective known as
SPILL, marry sinuous
shapes inspired by the
drawings of Egon Schiele
with details derived from the
work of architects, Josef
Hoffmann and Adolf Loos.
Tissot and Renault
Alpine have collaborated
on the Alpine on Board
Automatic, a new
accessory made for the
Alpine A110 car. With a
special aluminium case
inspired by the counters in
the Berlinette of the 1960s
and 70s, piston-shaped
push-buttons and a
perforated leather bracelet,
the wristwatch can be fitted
onto the supporting frame of
the car’s multi-media screen.
Also incorporating a “free
hand system” is the Aikon
Mercury by Maurice
Lacroix, launching in
October, that uses gravity to
display time. When the
wearer’s arm is down, thehands face down as if pulled
by gravity; when the arm is
raised, the hands are
positioned on the correct time.
Christophe Claret has
collaborated with Vasyl
Lomachenko, the Ukrainian
featherweight champion
a.k.a the “Picasso of
Boxing” on the Loma, a
mono-pusher chronograph,
limited to 20 pieces.
Franck Muller and
Regal Assets (the first
company to hold a
government-issued licence
to trade cryptos in its
deep-cold storage vault)have launched the Encrypto,
the world’s first collection of
functional bitcoin watches,
only available online.
Vacherin Constantin
will be using blockchain
technology (left) to combat
counterfeiting and
guarantee the authenticity
of its Les Collectionneurs.
Rado has been licensed
by Les Couleurs Suisse to
use the famous modernist
architect’s colour palette—the
“Architectural Polychromy”—
in its new collection (above):
the True Thinline Les
Couleurs Le Corbusier.Stopwatch News Report
By Nazanin Lankarani34 VANITY FAIR ON TIME AUTUMN^2019