Immersing oneself in the various watch collections of Parmigiani Fleurier will eventually reveal a unified sense of deliberate thoughtfulness to each timepiece. It should come as no surprise—the brand was built on the singular vision of its founder Michel Parmigiani, who developed his watchmaking skills through a career of restoring vintage timepieces. His daughter, Anne-Laure Parmigiani, says that the field requires a great deal of technical knowledge. “You need to think a lot about what to do, and what not to do. And sometimes you have pieces missing, so you need to find out how it was before without destroying the piece,” she explains. Anne-Laure, Product Manager for Parmigiani Fleurier, has worked for her father’s company for 15 years. The brand maintains itself as a small, independent business, with only about 70 employees producing several thousand watches a year.
Michel’s classical sensibilities extend beyond baroque- and even Renaissance-era watchmaking. One of the hallmarks of the Toric collection, the brand’s first and most well-known product, has a hand-knurled bezel and case design inspired by Ancient Greek Columns. This year’s release, the Quantieme Perpetuel Retrograde (SFr69,000/RM290,000) is a perpetual calendar with moonphase and retrograde date indicator. It also has a grey slate dial hand-guilloched with a spiral pattern similar to those found in nature; these patterns are derived from the Golden Ratio, a mathematical concept that fascinated mathematicians of antiquity. “In old pocket watches you can find this kind of craftsmanship,” Anne-Laure says of the guilloche pattern. “It’s because of my father’s knowledge in restoration that we have this model.”
This year also sees the Kalpagraphe Chronometre Titanium (SFr39,500/RM164,500). This chronograph, with its grey-and-black colour scheme and micro-blasted titanium case, is as contemporary as they come—but its streamlined, sporty case still speaks of Michel’s keen eye. “For the Kalpagraphe, it’s very important to us that it is comfortable… to really follow the shape of the wrist,” Anne-Laure says. Whether old-school of new, Michel’s thoughtfulness of watch design and decades of experience are plainly evident.
