Vacheron Constantin just unveiled a new concept wristwatch that’s special for all the reasons you wouldn’t expect.
For once, the watch isn’t making headlines due to technical innovation or a high price.
By contrast, people are talking about it because it literally smells.
And it smells good, too.
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When you put the words innovation and watchmaker in the same sentence, you almost always get a result that has to do with technical progress.
Bulgari, for example, just launched the thinnest automatic wristwatch ever created.
And then we’ve got H. Moser & Cie, who’s experimenting with a type of paint that doesn’t reflect the light, thus making the watch nearly invisible due to how dark it is.
Vacheron did something no one ever thought of, certainly not at this level, and launched a watch that oozes its own fragrance.
Unveiled at this year’s Watches and Wonders, Vacheron calls it the Égérie – The Pleats of Time.
It was developed by the Swiss manufacturer together with Yiqing Yin, a Paris-based fashion designer, and Dominique Ropion, the perfume maker that created Paco Rabanne’s Lady Million, among others.
Pictured below, left to right, fashion designer Yiqing Yin and perfume maker Dominique Ropion
The case itself is ‘conventional’, in that it’s made using pink gold for the 37mm case and diamonds to adorn the bezel.
However, the strap of the watch is made from a material that generates different scents upon contact with the skin or during movement.
Vacheron says the fragrance combines lavender, orange blossom with the scent of two slightly more rare flowers, the tuberose and the ylang-ylang.
It probably smells better than H. Moser’s watch which is literally made of cheese.
The collection comprises two different models, only one of which is available in the market.
The production version, the one with the ‘normal’ strap, is limited to 100 pieces but the other one, the one with the fragrance strap, is only a prototype for now.
Hopefully, that’ll change at some point.
