These days, having a statement watch is no longer a question of size or price. Even vintage doesn’t quite guarantee you something a cut above the ordinary.
Short of building your own movements — if you do, there’s a prize for that — here are three labels that are giving their unique read on timepieces.
“We don’t especially love watches, but it’s something that we started to appreciate,” says London-based jeweler Patcharavipa Bodiratnangkura, admitting that neither she nor her partner in life and business Kenzi Harleman regularly wear a timepiece.
“Being detached makes it easier for us to play around with the object,” says Harleman, who favors older models that he feels were designed almost with a jeweler’s eye. “When you look at what was created before, there was so much fantasy, so much more freedom in creating. A watch could be a bracelet, a necklace, anything.”
From the get-go, the Patcharavipa label has been rooted in this appreciation for objects bearing the mark of time, expressed in the “Siam Gold” texture that Bodiratnangkura gives her jewels. “It has a tactile, crooked, very handmade feel that was inspired by treasured objects from my great-grandparents,” she explains.
Launched in 2016, her brand is carried by five Dover Street Markets, including in London, Tokyo and New York, and has its own flagship in her hometown of Bangkok.
It was a wander through a flea market in the Thai capital that led them to the watch that would become their first customized piece, a 31mm Rolex that didn’t even work. Its size caught the eye of Bodiratnangkura, who “loves tiny, tiny things,” and wrapped in layers upon layers of gold, it became a ring.
Nowadays, the watches they sell have been fully refurbished to be functional, but vintage remains their preferred source since the pair “enjoy the mystery of buying watches,” Harleman says. The more streamlined aesthetic of Piaget, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Rolex Cellini are their preference.
“We want to try and keep the original roots of the watch, both its patina and design,” explains Harleman. “Not redesign the whole thing, just add enough to make it a bit more special.”
With that Patcharavipa textural touch, of course.
In addition to the 15 already sold, more are coming, including a 1970s Rolex Cellini Asymetrique with a cage that makes it part-high jeweler’s secret watch, part World War I-era protected pocket watch.
Their commercial success, accelerated since Rihanna was spotted wearing a customized ’70s Rolex Cellini King Midas in 2020, has boosted the brand.
“It allows us to be better for the business and continue designing things that we love without being stuck,” says Harleman. “And with imagination,” adds Bodiratnangkura.
In contrast, for Los Angeles-based designer Samantha Conn, the customized watches she launched under the 10-year-old Luna Skye jewelry label are the materialization of her long-held interest in timepieces. “I always wanted to get into the watch industry,” she says. “But at first, I was a bit intimidated by the crossover between jewelry and watches because I had no experience with it.
“I wanted to start customizing vintage Rolex watches because I really wanted to keep that integrity and special quality that they hold,” says the collector, who fell in love with the way her first find made her feel and the story behind it.
Behind the Luna Skye watch faces are her childhood on the Southern California coast that inspired the “Dark Mermaid” face with its starfish, diamond seashells and fishbone, or emerald’s connection to love for the eponymous model, where the numerals have been replaced by baguette and rounds of the stone.
The baseline for all her designs is the Rolex Datejust 36, a watch that exudes a unisex, powerful feel for Conn. First, because she’s “a Rolex girl through and through,” she says. “I’ve always been drawn to something a little chunkier and heavier and [the watchmaker] does such a beautiful job creating watches and releasing sizes that transcend between men and women.”
Plus, its dial size offered the right amount of space for the designs she had in mind. “It was important to keep [its] beauty and highlight that instead of overpowering it by putting a bunch of stuff on it,” explains Conn, who feels that fully blinged out takes “really dilute the beauty a Rolex is supposed to hold.”
Though demand is strong — Conn’s first model for herself ended being bought off her wrist by a client — she wants to keep her production to its current pace. Her initial run of three designs numbered five pieces each and she is getting requests for customization requests, too. “Having something limited also adds to the value and the lore of getting one,” she says.
But sometimes it’s not about the stories — it’s about the puns. Take Frenchman Romaric André, who officiates in the watchmaking world under the moniker seconde/seconde/.
His specialty? A knack for punchlines and watch world jokes that see him revisit a diving watch into a “Fifty Phantoms,” create a “Hitek Philippe” thanks to a pixelated cursor pointing to the hours, or “democratizing A Lange & Sun.”
Needless to say, he’s not affiliated with Omega, Patek Philippe or Rolex — although he’s now collaborated with a handful of watchmakers.
Don’t ask him what he does, though. “The moment you put a label, you’re closing doors” is what he has to say about it. Opening his website is an answer that’s as apt to his vocation as he is tongue-in-cheek: “I vandalize other people’s products because I failed at building mine.”
A business school graduate of the early 2000s, André worked in finance and banking for a handful of years before being lured toward entrepreneurship. At the height of the high-end mobile phone (think, Vertu circa 2005), he and a childhood friend launched a clamshell mobile that sparked a mechanical clock rewind every time the device opened or closed.
“It was extremely stupid and extremely cool as well,” he says. Long story short, by 2015 the project had tanked. But as André went from being the chief executive officer of a start-up that had raised funds to the “reality check moment” of what his next move could be, his one takeaway was, “I’m still in love with the watch as a product.”
Off he went, snapping up vintage Rolexes and Omegas for a couple hundred euros a pop, with the idea of trying something that hadn’t been done before — namely being a bit disrespectful to his source material by swapping out watch hands.
“Usually you don’t touch vintage watches because their value is in them being untouched,” he says. “But here I was, not respecting the original designs” with his own ideas, with the help of a hands manufacturer in France. His nom de plume was his way of rolling his eyes at the “exceptional watches for exceptional people” schtick of traditional watchmakers, he adds.
André turned up at 2019’s Baselworld with a cardboard box of his designs, “a bit like a parasite in a big watch fair,” and started showing them around to collectors. “Important collects went from ‘what the f–k are you doing’ one second to finding them fun and buying one the next,” he recalls.
Things started to snowball when watchmakers like Massena Lab and H.Moser came calling for collaborations, which scaled up production from a unique item to small batches. But it also multiplied André’s potential audience. Blogs and press followed.
These days, André counts close to 27,000 Instagram followers on the seconde/seconde/ account and his work spreads through a myriad of reposts. Six months ago, the scale changed again — up in numbers, down in price point — with a first collaboration with Timex that saw him drop a total of 3,000 pieces.
His latest drop, a not-quite-Valentine’s Day Timex with letters tumbled to spell “My-Ex” and playing on the idea of losers in love (the L-shaped hand eventually points back to the wearer), sold out in a matter of hours.
As the saying goes, some you win, some you lose, but whatever happens, André makes sure everyone gets a laugh.
