ith this launch we’re celebrating something important that began in 2014 with the Octo Finissimo, which heralded in a new era in terms of movement for Bvlgari,” Jean-Christophe Babin recounts. “Things clicked into place once we realised we could scale down the size of our calibres by reducing the total number of parts, rather than by reducing the size of individual parts.”

In the space of ten years, they have developed more than ten movements in the contemporary extra-thin style, including a minute repeater, a perpetual calendar and a tourbillon. This recent expertise in movement R&D has spilled beyond the Octo Finissimo line: it began in 2022 with the Piccolissimo, the world’s smallest round mechanical movement, designed for the Serpenti, and continued in 2025, the Year of the Snake, with the small, Lady Solotempo BVS100 automatic movement, for the same collection.

Unveiled for the Serpenti Seduttori collection and two Serpenti Tubogas creations, the Lady Solotempo measures 19mm in diameter and is 3.9mm thick. It weighs just 5 grammes and has a power reserve of 50 hours. Its round, compact shape, suited to the curves of the Serpenti, also lends itself to other Bvlgari creations.

Mechanical movements to “double the sales potential”

“It’s kind of making up for history,” says Jean-Christophe Babin: “Bvlgari really entered watchmaking history with the 1948 Serpenti secret watch, inspired by the Cleopatra aesthetic. Back then, of course, the models were fitted with mechanical movements, bought from the most important Swiss manufacturers. All that died out during the quartz crisis; what’s more, the first mechanical calibres to disappear were the women’s movements, because at the time they were already a minority.”

Following this crisis, production of Serpenti models continued, but exclusively with quartz movements, right up to 2022 when, with the Piccolissimo mechanical movement, Bvlgari revived “something it should never have stopped making”. This period of latency, related partly to the singularity of the Serpenti’s “ovoid” shape but above all to the brand’s decade spent exploring multiple directions, nevertheless allowed the company to design a much less complicated movement than previously, comprising only around a hundred parts.

With a 30-hour power reserve, the Piccolissimo is still an outstanding product, manual-winding in order to gain space and thus become the world’s smallest mechanical movement. All that remained to do after that was to produce a self-winding, workhorse version, admittedly a little larger but with a greater power reserve of around 50 hours. Its bidirectional rotor was designed in tungsten carbide to make it heavier and generate more energy.

“We had to find the right compromise between thickness and diameter, while conserving the same aesthetic as the quartz watch,” stresses Jean-Christophe Babin. “At 3.9mm, it’s still a very thin model. And we’re going to continue making quartz versions at the same time as the new possibilities offered by this mechanical calibre – new horizons that are certain to double the sales potential of the Serpenti given the growing importance of mechanical watch calibres, including for ladies’ models! And we’re on a positive curve, as Bvlgari’s watch division posted a record year in 2024. Equipping our iconic ladies’ model with a mechanical movement makes us even more optimistic.”

Thinking as a group

The CEO stresses the importance of their own R&D that the development every new movement requires: “This is our thirteenth movement, and even though we’re accumulating experience and conceptual innovation, we literally start with a blank page every time. You know, they might all be called Octo Finissimo, but all these movements have very little to do with one another, except that they’re all ultra-thin! We don’t have any single, common base, but rather one single philosophy – reducing the total number of parts.”

He goes on to reveal that this movement will subsequently be made available to the other LVMH brands – an approach indicative of broader change in the industrial strategy of the group’s watchmaking division: although the vocation of Bvlgari’s manufacture in Le Sentier is not to produce large volumes, “in the long term we’ll need a small, reliable, across-the-group mechanical movement, produced in larger quantities”.

In the same vein as the new strategy announcing Zenith as the future manufacture for the whole group (see our article on this), discussions are in progress about a base calibre common to all LVMH ladies’ brands.

“LVMH has been in the watchmaking business for 25 years now, with a portfolio that today comprises ten brands, positioned at the higher end of the market. It makes sense to create synergies without compromising the identity of each brand by keeping Finissimo exclusive to Bvlgari, Unico to Hublot and Timegraph to TAG Heuer, for example. Inversely, for more standard hour-minute-seconds movements, a joint platform will help us achieve critical mass at group rather than brand level.”

Three options for a universal ladies’ calibre

Zenith was chosen to set up this shared platform, because “it’s historically a brand of volumes, with strong production capacity and industrial expertise”. So, after its launch at Le Sentier, the Solotempo is to be readied for series production in the factory at Le Locle (guaranteeing, by the by, a full order book at Zenith) in order to “benefit all the group brands that want to develop their offering of women’s watches”.

Most importantly, besides designing a universal three-hand movement for all the group brands as mentioned above, the intention is also that these same brands should have one and the same calibre for women’s models. Jean-Christophe Babin mentions three possibilities in relation to this: “Zenith has its Elite calibre, we have our Solotempo, and the third hypothesis is to start from scratch. This third option is interesting, because we’d be able to adopt the best standards to date, with higher levels of finish, and to apply the same recipe as for Finissimo – fewer parts for more efficient assembly times.”

For the first time, aware of its potential and structured as a horology centre, LVMH’s watchmaking division aims to invest in a shared industrial tool. “Moreover, women’s watches tend to be the poor relation in the watchmaking industry, whereas we have some very feminine brands in the group,” adds Bvlgari’s CEO. “That makes it a very interesting potential market. We have to make real women’s watches for women! This very feminine trend in the group is an advantage, whereas the Swiss industry has remained very male-oriented.”

Certainly, synergies already existed within the group, but they tended to be “occasional”, such as Bvlgari’s use of Zenith’s El Primero under the name of Velissimo. “What would make no sense would be for every brand to launch its own hour-minutes-seconds watch rather than taking advantage of economies of scale. But the system won’t be rigid either: every brand will certainly be bent on personalising the movement to suit its identity – the decoration on the oscillating weight, the base plate or the bridges, for example. Every brand will stay fundamentally the same, but will have a common basis. We’ve far more to gain than to lose, including in terms of reliability, because volumes guarantee industrial efficiency.”

And the timescale for this project? “We’re giving ourselves two to three years. Of course, that will also depend on demand from the other brands. Paradoxically, it will take less time to produce the calibre if we start from a blank sheet than if we adapt an existing calibre, because certain constraints can’t always be corrected. We’ll have analysed all the available options in a few months’ time.”

One question might yet enter the equation: whether or not to equip the different calibres of the group’s shared platform with a silicon escapement. “It’s a possibility,” says Jean-Christophe Babin. “But not everything will be done via this platform. We’ll continue doing our own movement R&D in parallel.”