WATCH YOUR TIME |
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F O C U S
Van Cleef & Arpels paid tribute to Paris at
Watches and Wonders Geneva 2025, the
city of the Maison’s birth and a boundless
source of poetic inspiration ever since.
Visiting the Van Cleef & Arpels stand at Watches and
Wonders in any year is like rediscovering one’s inner
child. From the very first moment, visitors are capti-
vated by the whimsical worlds this storied jeweller cre-
ates, whether the magic of fairy tales, the mysteries of
the cosmos or, even, the wonders of nature, all seen
through a horological lens as unique as it is original. The
2025 edition was no exception, with a special dedica-
tion to the City of Light, allowing Van Cleef & Arpels
to explore “Poetic Time under the Parisian sky”. “This
event is always an opportunity for us to tell stories and
highlight our Poetic Complications, such as the Pont des
Amoureux collection,” explains Catherine Rénier, CEO of
the Maison since September 2024 (having previously led
Jaeger-LeCoultre for six years). “These creations have
become a signature of Van Cleef & Arpels, showcasing
both our mechanical expertise and our commitment to
the decorative arts, while expressing one of our found-
ing sources of inspiration: love.”
Without diving into the full history of Van Cleef &
Arpels, it’s worth noting that the Maison traces its ori-
gins to the 1895 marriage of Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle
Arpels, both from families of jewellery merchants. In
1906, they established their high jewellery and watch-
making house on Place Vendôme in Paris. Since then,
love has remained a central theme for Van Cleef & Arpels,
in perfect harmony with the Maison’s positive, life-af-
firming, creative philosophy. Among these love-inspired
creations, the Pont des Amoureux holds a special place.
Thanks to a double retrograde movement displaying the
hours and minutes, two lovers gradually approach each
other to share a kiss at noon and midnight, before part-
ing ways once more to continue marking time.
Since its launch in 2010, this now-iconic watch has
appeared in multiple iterations, including one featur-
ing an additional mechanical module that lets wearers
replay the kissing scene on demand, a twelve second
moment of magic.
In the name of love
This year, four new versions join the collection, pre-
senting the couple within painted scenes that cap-
ture different moments of the day. The dials feature a
sculpted gold bridge and are rendered in coloured gri-
saille enamel – a rare technique – while the casebacks
showcase enamel decals over sapphire crystal and hand
engraving on gold. Beyond these poetic additions, Van
Cleef & Arpels introduces a new chapter with the Lady
Arpels Bal des Amoureux Automaton, a watch that stages
a romantic reunion in a open-air café setting. At noon
and midnight, the characters move closer and kiss via an
automaton mechanism, a scene that can also be replayed
on demand. The hours and minutes are shown by two
stars driven by a bi-retrograde system. “This watch is the
essence of Van Cleef & Arpels horology,” says Catherine
Rénier. “Like every love story, it takes patience – in this
case, four years to develop both the calibre and the mod-
ule, which was conceived entirely in-house. Then comes
the full artistry of the dial, built in five layers and brought
to life with exceptional enamelling. These crafts are
vital to the Maison. Not only must we master them, we
must pass them on.”
No visit to the Van Cleef & Arpels stand would be com-
plete without a look at its Objets Extraordinaires, highly
complex automaton clocks, many of which are created
in collaboration with the sculptor and automaton-maker
François Junod. “These ‘objects’ allow us to tell our sto-
ries from a different perspective and in a wholly unique
way,” explains Rénier. In Naissance de l’Amour, Cupid
emerges from a basket of feathers. Meanwhile, the mon-
umental Automate Planétarium features the movement
of the Sun and planets in line with their real-world orbits.
With these works, Van Cleef & Arpels offers “a theatre
for dialogue between mechanical art, high jewellery and
the métiers d’art”, a theatre that perfectly embodies the
Maison’s incomparably enchanted world. ■ Éric Dumatin
1. VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux Auto-
mate. The lovers from the famous bridge now meet at an open-
air dance café, typical of Paris’s ‘faubourgs’ in the 19th Century.
Hours and minutes are indicated by retrograde starshaped hands,
while the couple dance at midday, midnight and on demand via an
automaton mechanism. They move across a multilayered scene
enriched with white gold, grisaille enamel and coloured grisaille
enamel, all housed within a diamond-set white gold case. It fea-
tures an automatic movement equipped with dual retrogrades
and automaton mechanism with ondemand animation.
2. VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux Dawn.
In 2025, Van Cleef & Arpels introduces four poetic complications
celebrating times of day: Dawn, Morning, Evening and Moon-
light. For the ‘Dawn’ version in rose gold, the dial shows the lov-
ers as retrograde hands that traverse a coloured grisaille enamel
dial and the watch is paired with an intricately jewelled brace-
let adorned with diamonds and a gradient of pale pink sapphires.
Inside is an automatic movement with dual retrograde mecha-
nisms and on-demand animation.
Poetic Time
CATHERINE RÉNIER | CEO VAN CLEEF & ARPELS