In Midnight In Paris, the 2011 film by Mr Woody Allen, a troubled modern-day screenwriter, played by Mr Owen Wilson, finds himself transported to the French capital’s giddy 1920s heyday. After hitting a party thrown by Mr Jean Cocteau, Mr Wilson winds up knocking back cocktails with the likes of Mr Cole and Ms Linda Lee Porter, Mr F Scott and Ms Zelda Fitzgerald and Mr Ernest Hemingway, who offers to show Mr Wilson’s latest work to playwright Ms Gertrude Stein. The biggest banker in the director’s back catalogue and a critical success to boot, the film suggested that in times of uncertainty, the past – imaginary or otherwise – can feel like a safer place to be. (A sentiment now shared by Mr Allen himself, surely.)

Paris’ Belle Époque was named in hindsight, bookended by the horrors of WWI, and this second gilded era between the wars perhaps seems shinier in light of what happened next. The decade that followed Mr Wilson’s soirées with the literati was something of a mixed bag for the City of Light given that by the middle of 1940, Paris was occupied by Nazi forces. But if history has taught us anything, it is how things are remembered that counts.

Founded in the heart of the Haut-Marais district in 2009, Merci the shop was set up as a launchpad for the best in fashion, design and household goods, showcasing upcoming talents in each field, and in turn supporting a string of educational projects in Madagascar. Eight years later, the brand introduced its own physical product: the LMM-01 watch.

Even for those with the most accurate watch in the world, times are very much uncertain today. Inspired by the 1930s, at least before the decade took a turn for the worse, the classic, pared-back design of Merci’s range of timepieces is reassuring. Featuring stepped steel cases, easy-to-read military functionality and very little else, these watches hark back to a simpler age, which history books would suggest wasn’t actually that simple at all. And while designed in Paris, each comes with a Swiss-built movement – and a price tag seemingly from another era, too.

“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it,” Sir Winston Churchill noted, paraphrasing Spanish philosopher Mr George Santayana. But if you could set your watch to better times, why not? Thank you, Merci.