THE JOURNAL
When Mr Christian Selmoni, style and heritage director for Vacheron Constantin, was just 12 years old he received his first watch. “I remember I spent quite a lot of hours at night looking at it,” he says from his office in Geneva. “It was sort of a sports watch and had luminescent hands. I would just look at the hands glowing in the night.”
Perhaps it was this pre-teen experience that led him eventually to the world of watchmaking, or perhaps it was the time spent watching his grandfather actually assembling watches at home. “My grandfather was an excellent watchmaker,” says Mr Selmoni. “I spent many hours watching him doing the assembly and this is how, I think, I got this interest, this passion for watchmaking.”
Either way, in 1990, Mr Selmoni found himself in the historic house of Vacheron Constantin, exactly at the moment when mechanical watchmaking – depressed after years of quartz mania – was making a comeback. “It was a great surprise for my generation because we all thought that quartz would make traditional watchmaking disappear.” Instead, mechanical watchmaking rallied, and became desirable precisely for the heritage and tradition that quartz threated to displace. “It was very interesting that clients and the public were interested in mechanical watchmaking [again]. So, I thought it would be very interesting to work in this area. There was an incredible know-how in Switzerland about mechanics and micro-mechanics. It was a great opportunity for me to work in this field.”
Now, 30 years later, Mr Selmoni is still at the maison that – he mentions with great pride when MR PORTER meets him at the company headquarters – has been in the business of watchmaking (non-stop) since 1755. In that time, the brand has created around one million watches (“which is not that much at the end of the day!”) and become known for timeless, elegant shapes and silhouettes, grand complications and decorative flourishes. With 265 years of watchmaking, it means that Vacheron Constantin not only has almost three centuries of expertise to draw on, but that it has been in the first wave of many innovative designs. Things that we take for granted today – the tonneau (barrel) shape, for example – were cutting edge one hundred years ago. And Vacheron Constantin was on that very edge, introducing its first tonneau in 1912 and doing it so beautifully that the watch shape has become a brand signature.
“The key for me is authenticity,” says Mr Selmoni about why he loves working for Vacheron Constantin. “This is an authentic, high-end watchmaking brand, which has been able to maintain all its tradition, all its know-how, and all its craftsmanship.” As part of his role as the style and heritage director (he previously served as the brand’s artistic director), he has become intimately acquainted with much of the brand’s legacy. It’s a legacy which Vacheron Constantin takes great pains to continue, training young watchmakers to become specialists over several years.
By his own admission, it could take a lifetime to learn about all that Vacheron Constantin has to offer. “We have about 420 linear metres of archives,” he says, which house sketches, designs, stories, letters, and prototypes. “I’m fascinated by the richness of our archive; I love to listen to new stories coming out of it.” Additionally, Vacheron Constantin employs specialists who have, let’s say, special watchmaking powers. “I’ve learned a lot talking with the watchmakers of grand complications,” says Mr Selmoni. “It’s very interesting to speak with them because with their eyes they can see things that we cannot see with our eyes.”
Exposure to exquisite watchmaking and the resulting luxury product surely must take its toll on a man, and just so, Mr Selmoni has as dream timepiece he would love to have in his own collection. “It’s going to be a great challenge for me [to acquire]. It’s a fantastic Vacheron Constantin from the 1940s called the ‘reference 4261’. It’s a grand complication – this watch can strike, on demand, the hours, quarters and minutes. It’s an amazing design, super thin, super elegant and only you know how complicated it is.” Indeed, it is a rare design, which means that a vintage piece is often valued in the mid six-figure price range.
During MR PORTER’s visit to Geneva, Mr Selmoni showed us five equally rare, equally special timepieces from the Vacheron Constantin archive. The brand’s private collection houses 1,300 watches – and the pieces that Mr Selmoni selected stand out from both the technical and design point of view. Collectors will know that the more complicated a watch, the more unusual the shape, the fewer made – the rarer and more valuable the watch will be. But for those readers unacquainted with what makes a special watch special, we had Mr Selmoni break it down for us.
First up, is a timepiece from 1930 with a rectangular shape and featuring a complete calendar with moon phases. While rectangular watches are a common sight now, Mr Selmoni emphasized that for the time, it was extremely unusual. What’s more: “It was very rare to see these complications in this shape before the Second World War.”
Next, we saw a timepiece from 1953 with a blue cloisonné dial. Cloisonné is an ancient enamel-work technique, which is now extremely rare. Mr Selmoni also pulled out the 6426 chronograph (of which only 30 were made in 1955 in honour of Vacheron Constantin’s 200th anniversary) and a 1955 timepiece with a guilloche-decorated dial.
Finally, MR PORTER was treated to a surprise: a timepiece “that few people know, model 2215,” said Mr Selmoni. Manufactured only from 1975 through 1977, the 2215 is one of the very early integrated bracelet watches but, more importantly, it’s a royal chronometer. “Royal chronometer was a designation invented in 1907 and is used only for the most accurate Vacheron Constantin movements,” says Mr Selmoni. “This generation of timepieces has been the biggest influence on modern integrated timepieces, like the ‘overseas’.”
But descriptions of these watches simply don’t do them justice. Step back in time with MR PORTER, Vacheron Constantin and Mr Selmoni as we peek into the archives… and see for yourself some of the rarest Vacheron Constantin watches on earth.