Vanity Fair UK - 10.2019

From top: Arnaud Chastaingt, director of

Chanel’s watchmakiang creation studio and

the latest J12 watch in ceramic and steel; the

reverse of the new J12; the calibrated and

rot atin g beze l scaled u p by C h a st ain g t

path whatever happens.” Accordingly,
Chanel took a share in movement
maker Kenissi, described as the
“industrial arm’’ of Rolex sub-brand
Tudor, giving industry kremlinologists
much to think about.

B

eau chooses to downplay the
commercial significance.
“We have a lot of values in
common and we said, okay, why not
work together like this. We took a share
of the company so that we could make
sure that we are able to develop
movements according to our needs. In
this case, we worked on a movement
designed by Kenissi on which we have
changed a few parts including the
design of the rotating mass.”
And this new calibre, visible through
the crystal caseback, is immediately
identifiable thanks to the hoop-like
design of the tungsten rotor—so shaped
as to be able to accommodate gem-
setting on high jewellery models. The
reshaped rotor, along with the all-
ceramic caseback that replaces the
steel of the original are the work of
Arnaud Chastaingt, director of
Chanel’s “watchmaking creation
studio”. It is somehow characteristic
that the most noticeable changes to the
watch are concealed when the watch is
on the wearer’s wrist.
“At first I wanted to change
everything,” admits Chastaingt. “So in
the first two months I changed
everything. Then I quickly understood
that Jacques Helleu had already made
the revolution when he launched the
watch. When I understood that, of
course I had to keep the DNA of the
original design. I knew then that my
creative approach would be more the
approach of the surgeon than the
designer. And I knew, too, that I had to
suppress my creative ego.”
So began four years of work that saw
Chastaingt’s gimlet eye study every
aspect of the watch. Forensic study of
the numerals on the dial revealed
minor inconsistencies that suggested
Helleu had drawn them himself,
inspired by the instruments on his
vintage cars—he had a 1957 Bentley
Continental and a 1958 Facel Vega HK

500. The number “3” in particular
     bothered Chastaingt “so I chose to
     re-work all the 12 numbers with a

typographer. It was a big job.”

Moreover, in addition to changing

shape, the numbers themselves are

now ceramic and applied onto the dial.

Elsewhere Chastaingt played with

scale; if the calibrated and rotating

bezel now looks a little finer that is

because the number of notches has

increased from 30 to 40. If the

notching has been increased by one

third, then the crown has been

reduced in size by an equal amount

and sits more harmoniously within the

two crown guards that swell from the

case wall to embrace the winder.

It is a considerable

improvement: side by side, the earlier

winder looks swollen and carbuncular.

But these details do not reveal

themselves with a cursory glance: they

take a while to spot.

The hour and minute hands are

now the same width with a

dimensional adjustment of the

luminescent areas, in black

Super-LumiNova on the black

J12 and in white on the white

J12. The sense of a

photographic negative is

enhanced by the

selection of white hands

for the black watch and

vice versa. “The white

and black are the perfect

negative,” says Chastaingt

delightedly. “Jacques Helleu

couldn’t do the perfect

negative with the hands, for the

simple reason that at that time

black Super-Lu miNova didn’t

exist.”

In essence that is the nature of

this redesign: bringing the J12 closer to

the watch that Jacques Helleu wanted

to make. In other words, bit by bit,

technology is catching up with Helleu’s

vision. He had the idea for the J12 in the

early 1990s but lacked the technical

means to bring it into being. As he later

admitted, “No one was capable of

giving me the shiny and resistant black

that I needed. The practical feasibility

only came later with this ceramic

nearly as hard as diamond.”

But then Helleu had an uncanny

knack of predicting the future and even

knew how this redesign, a dozen years

after his death, would be carried out.

Speaking in an interview in 2003, he

says watchmaking “taught me

throughout the years to be even more

rigorous and precise: a case or bracelet

is successfully managed to a 100th, if

not a 1,000th, of a millimetre.” It is a

lesson that his successors at Chanel

have learned well.

Bit by bit, technology

is catching up with

Jacques Helleu’s

original 1 990s vision

AUTUMN 2019 VANITY FAIR ON TIME 45