Chanel Couture O’Clock Assortment Impressed by Founder’s Dressmaking
The trimmings of dressmaking — together with thimbles, thread, scissors and measuring tapes — function in a brand new 20-piece Couture O’Clock watch assortment by Chanel, impressed by the home’s couture workshops on Rue Cambon in Paris.
Arnaud Chastaingt, director of Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio, wrote in an e mail that he had chosen to concentrate on the “roots of the Home” by reimagining the model’s core watch designs, together with the J12, the Première and the Boy.Pal.
The gathering, out there in Chanel boutiques in June, contains seven limited-edition variations of the J12, in various combos of metal, 18-karat gold, black and white ceramic and diamonds (beginning at $7,000 for the 33 millimeter in white ceramic).
On three of those, the time is indicated by a pair of scissors and a stitching needle. Three others function a cartoon depiction of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel sporting a swimsuit and pearls. The seventh has a plainer, diamond-set dial.
The J12 Couture Workshop Automaton watch (value on utility) is powered by the Caliber 6, Chanel’s latest in-house caliber and the primary automaton complication to be created on the model’s watchmaking facility in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. When the automaton is activated, the cartoon couturier seems to bounce, scissors in hand, subsequent to her dressmaking dummy.
It’s a reminder, Mr. Chastaingt wrote, that “Mademoiselle Chanel considered herself at the start as a seamstress.”
The Couture O’Clock assortment additionally contains two new iterations of the Première, Chanel’s first watch design, which debuted in 1987. The Première Ruban Couture, priced at $9,650, includes a double wraparound leather-based strap with the strains and numerals of a metric tape measure. The Première Charms Couture, for $10,300, has the identical octagonal dial, nevertheless it dangles from a woven leather-based and gold-plated metal bracelet alongside metal and enamel charms of things like a spool of thread and a thimble.
On the brand new $10,300 Boy.Pal watch, the dial includes a dressmaker’s sample for a basic Chanel tweed jacket, whereas its bezel is adorned with an 18-karat gold chain, a reference to the chains sewn into the hems of these jackets.
The gathering additionally contains 4 lengthy 18-karat gold-and-diamond pendant watches, with dials hidden on the base of a thimble; inside a security pin; within the waist of a couture dressmaker’s dummy; or inside a pincushion-shaped medallion.
Chanel’s couture heritage was “an obsession, that I’m consistently taking into new territory that you simply don’t essentially anticipate,” Mr. Chastaingt wrote.
Therefore, that medallion pendant can also be one among 4 new additions to the home’s Mademoiselle Privé assortment. (That assortment beforehand explored the theme of couture by the Bouton vary, by which dials are hidden beneath bejeweled buttons on tweed and leather-based cuffs, and within the pincushion-inspired Pique-Aiguilles vary.)
However the “masterpiece” of the Couture O’Clock assortment, Mr. Chastaingt mentioned, is a musical desk clock and automaton known as the Musical Clock Couture Workshop. At 34.2 centimeters (about 13.5 inches) tall, it options 5 dressmaker’s dummies, every adorned with an 18-karat gold and diamond brooch.
Powered by an automaton motion made by the Swiss firm Reuge, the dummies rise, fall and swivel beneath a miniature gold and diamond chandelier, to the tune of “My Lady,” a track from 1932.
The time is displayed alongside a tape measure on the base, and the clock is wound utilizing an 18-karat-gold key set with 221 diamonds, which hangs from a separate necklace that’s set with 132 diamonds.
Mr. Chastaingt known as the piece a “miniature world,” one which “suggests the everlasting race of time.”
