There’s been more than a little expectation around how Tiffany & Co would do men’s watches since its acquisition by LVMH. We got a glimpse into the future with the company's preview at this year's LVMH Watch Week in Milan, with highlights including the new 40mm chronograph Timer and the Eternity Baguette.
The Tiffany Timer, with baguette-cut diamonds as hour markers
A 60-piece limited edition cased in platinum with an El Primero chronograph movement from Zenith, the Timer's treatment blurs any sense of boundary with the jewellery watches, and not just because the hour markers are baguette-cut diamonds. The dial is Tiffany blue, applied in 15 layers of lacquer, and there other touches linking the watches to the jewellery collections, including a faceted crown designed to recall the six-pronged Tiffany setting for solitaire rings. The winding rotor visible through the caseback, meanwhile, is a stylised Bird-on-a-Rock motif linking the watch to Jean Schlumberger’s iconic design for the house.
The small size of the edition means that it will likely be snapped up fast by existing clients.
The Sixteen Stone Mother-of-Pearl watch
More directly inspired by Schlumberger’s original design, the Sixteen Stone Mother-of-Pearl watch, also shown in Milan, references the cross-stitch motif, a nod to the designer's heritage in textile manufacturing. The dial features a central mother-of-pearl disc encircled by an outer ring crafted from yellow gold stitches and adorned with 24 round brilliant diamonds that rotate freely in response to the wearer’s movements; making these stitches involves a meticulous process spanning 25 hours, including precision mould-making and hand-polishing each gold stitch.
Housed in a 36mm white gold case, the watch is snow-set with 413 diamonds, while the caseback bears a sunburst engraving taken from the Schlumberger Floral Arrows brooch. It’s paired with a Tiffany Blue alligator strap, fastened with a diamond-set white gold buckle.
Tiffany’s priority is firmly on the jewellery for now, but with a back-catalogue so full of design gems, our watch expectations are high.