He said he would do it and now he has done it. François-Paul Journe, one of the watchmakers who has made the biggest contribution to the renaissance in fine mechanical watchmaking, with his hyper-traditional pieces inspired by the watches of the Louis XIV era, breaks one of the taboos of fine watchmaking by using a quartz movement. He has taken this step – which has caused an outcry among the guardians of the temple of watchmaking – for his first collection dedicated exclusively to ladies, which is called “élégante”.

Elégante by F.P. Journe

As he himself says, “I wanted to make a nice feminine watch that was pleasant to wear and easy to use. So it made sense to use quartz. But not just any old quartz, a luxury quartz, both in terms of its technology and its finishing. It wasn’t as easy as you might think: it took eight years of research to perfect this watch. The movement has been developed entirely by us, using a very specific quartz module developed in Switzerland and everything is assembled here. The élégante actually has the only electromechanical movement that has been designed and produced for a luxury watch, with a true vision of luxury.”
So what is so special about this movement? Through a small aperture at 5 o’clock on the dial, you can see small mechanical sensor that detects the movements of the wearer. Thanks to this sensor, the watch will stop after 30 minutes when it is not worn. But during this hibernation, when everything stops moving inside the watch, the microprocessor continues to record the time. Therefore, as soon as the watch is put back on the wrist, its hands immediately return to the correct time by the shortest route – clockwise or anti-clockwise – irrespective of whether it has been “asleep” for a few hours or several years. This, together with a large-size battery, gives the élégante a power reserve of ten years, or even up to 18 years in standby mode! This quartz movement – “Geneva Made” calibre 1210 – is visible through a sapphire crystal back and has been finished as if it were a “noble” mechanical movement. Right down to the printed circuit board, whose circuits have been designed so as to create gilt volutes that meet around a heart where the microprocessor is.
The “tortue plate” case is very elegant and the dial has a typical “Journian” classicism. Another “taboo” broken is the use of titanium with segmented rubber in seven different colours with a matching rubber strap. In red gold, platinum and also jewellery versions. Another innovation: the titanium version has a totally luminescent dial. At night, the entire SuperLuminova-coated dial glows, with the hands visible as a shadow. Its price: 12,000 euros excluding tax for the base model. The taboo is broken. But is the bet won? The answer will come over the next few months.

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HUBLOT, the luxury Swatch

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Source: Europa Star February - March 2014 Magazine Issue