Why are the most memorable watch designers increasingly from outside the industry?

'We can bring a certain DNA to a new watch. If the design brand has a recognisable name that adds more value. And there’s a story in the result – and storytelling is half what upmarket products are all about,' suggests Andrea Zagato.

Zagato is head of the esteemed Italian coach-builder of the same name, which has worked with some 45 car companies, from Porsche to Bentley (and debuted a hypercar with the new Capricorn Group earlier in 2025), since it was established in 1919. But latterly, it’s broken away from the automotive sector. In January 2026, it will unveil its second watch design for Chopard, this time a tourbillon with a more radical, tubular-framed design inspired by the chassis created by another Italian company, Columbus, also established 1919.

'Working on a watch project means we get [to introduce our name] to a wider audience,' Zagato explains of his motivation. 'But it’s also a challenge for us – we get to open our mind by working outside of the automotive sector. The theory is that we have a design language that can be applied to a watch to create something new.'

Indeed, the Chopard/Zagato relationship is just the latest instance of a watchmaker looking to an external industrial designer for input. Christophe Claret has worked with ex-Peugeot designer Vincent Fourdrinier, Tag Heuer with Ross Lovegrove, Mauriac De Mauriac with Fabian Schwaerzler, Timex and Seiko with Nikon and DeLorean car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. Tej Chauhan overhauled Rado’s Diastar model earlier this year and has another project set for release in 2026.

But what’s in it for the watch brand? 'Internal designers tend to get consumed by a culture, influenced by what their peers are doing, so this is a way of exploring a different perspective, [especially] for an industry like the watch industry, which has a certain specialism,' argues Chuahan, who persuaded Rado to employ a bright yellow ceramic for a version of its True Square model. 'The approach [for the watch company] is to do something different in a strategic way – to start a conversation.'

History suggests that this breaking out of a comfort zone, through collaboration with external designers, can sometimes lead to the creation of a watch of atypical distinctiveness: Roger Tallon’s work for Lip, Richard Arbib’s for Hamilton and Max Bill’s for Junghans stand out. But turning to fresh eyes might also be a response to deeper shifts in an industry’s structure.

Zagato argues that the car industry, for example, has long been bifurcating into elite, hugely expensive supercars and mass-consumer production cars, with the latter only becoming increasingly homogenous due to the standardisation of components, in part driven by electrification. 'That might in time encourage everyone in the automotive world to work harder on design and appearance in order to stand out,' he argues. 'I think we’re also seeing the same kind of process starting to happen in the watch world.'

Christian-Louis Col agrees. 'Distinctive design isn’t mainstream and is hard to build a big brand on, especially when the necessary design culture – an awareness of art, fashion and so on – isn’t deeply ingrained in the watchmaking industry,' argues the owner of Ikepod – arguably the breakthrough concept watch brand, when it launched in 1994 with a collection designed by Marc Newson, and which has relaunched an update of Newson’s Hemipod design in December.

'Many brands now focus on making digestible copies of copies with most of the more radical design ideas only coming from expensive independent brands [the supercars of the watch world],' he adds. 'It’s hard for a more mainstream watch brand to be disruptive. Working with industrial designers on occasion is one way to break out of that [paradigm] and show what’s possible.'