Watches and Wonders Edit: Chanel’s Couture O’Clock and Pink Edition timepieces wow with design elements and technical features, under the direction of Arnaud Chastaingt

May 6 , 2024

Chanel’s limited edition J12 Couture Workshop Automaton Calibre 6. Photos: Handout

Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio director dropped the Couture O’Clock capsule collection, featuring the J12 Couture Workshop Automaton Calibre 6 with its jauntily moving Coco Chanel figure

The J12 X-Ray Pink Edition timepiece features 93 pink sapphires totalling some 8.28 carats – Chastaingt says that at Chanel, the colour pink has ‘its own individual character and authority’

Watches and Wonders 2024 concluded in Geneva in mid-April, with more than 50 of the world’s top horology brands coming together to present the first new releases of the year. For Arnaud Chastaingt, director of Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio, this meant – among other releases – dropping the aesthetically arresting Couture O’Clock haute horlogerie and horlogerie capsule collection.

The Chanel Bust Long Necklace Couture Watch, with diamond snow-setting and criss-crossed with black lacquered lines, is inspired by a couture dummy and opens at the waist to reveal a secret watch with a black dial

Discussing the Couture O’Clock collection, Chastaingt said ahead of Watches and Wonders, “I have chosen to focus on the roots of the house of Chanel – in other words, on couture, the original profession of Gabrielle Chanel.

“With Couture O’Clock, I wanted to open the doors to the Rue Cambon studios – a unique time and space governed by the rhythm of fashion collections,” he added. “I wanted to plunge into the intensely focused atmosphere … the patience and painstaking care demanded by haute couture.”

Inspired by Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s Rue Cambon atelier and the tools of her seamstresses – including thimbles, scissors and safety pins – the collection’s jewel watches marry bold design elements with refined details and technical sophistication, elevating ordinary objects into jewellery. There’s also the Chanel Bust Long Necklace Couture watch and Long Necklaces Couture watch, remarkable fusions of timepiece and jewellery that can transform into watches to wear on the wrist, around the neck or even on the finger.

The Chanel J12 Couture Workshop Automaton Calibre 6 watch

The limited edition J12 Couture Workshop Automaton Calibre 6, of which only 100 pieces are available, has a dial featuring a 20-second animation of a cartoon Coco Chanel brandishing a pair of scissors next to her couture mannequin – the brand’s first time envisioning moving decor on a watch. The bezel is enhanced by 48 baguette-cut diamonds, while the crown is set with a brilliant-cut diamond, the stones totalling around 3.34 carats.

The timepiece is equipped with the Calibre 6, a Chanel Manufacture manual-winding mechanical movement with automaton function. The new in-house movement – whose 355 components include 54 rubies – is responsible for the jaunty movements of Mademoiselle Chanel, activated at the touch of a button.