Van Cleef & Arpels on the Self-discipline Behind Creativity with Director Pascal Narbeburu

On the earth of haute horlogerie, the place technical prowess and centuries of custom typically dominate the dialog, Van Cleef & Arpels stands aside. After all, there are sensible causes of being that designate this as a result of Van Cleef & Arpels is finest recognized for its jewelry and that alone tends to make for a really totally different watchmaking facet of issues, if one even emerges.

Certainly, the meteoric rise of this Parisian model during the last 15 years or so has largely been a narrative of artistic ascendancy rising from its jewelry enterprise.

That being the case, Van Cleef & Arpels by no means thought of going the identical route as any of the assorted storied haute horlogerie manufacturers. Former CEO Nicolas Bos stated as a lot once we first met him circa 2006, when the model was within the midst of launching a tribute to 100 years of watchmaking at Van Cleef & Arpels (extra on this later). This heritage shouldn’t be forgotten as a result of the agency, which likes to name itself a Maison, has the historical past to again up its ambitions.

Van Cleef & Arpels is a agency the place the story comes first; the place the mechanics serve a story of poetry, love, and enchantment. Its explicit genius is permitting its artistic energy to behave as its engine. Bos, now the CEO of the Richemont group that owns Van Cleef & Arpels, as soon as stated the acronym VCA stands not just for Van Cleef & Arpels but additionally Very Artistic Artists, which stays pure gold. On the helm at the moment of this distinctive horological imaginative and prescient is Pascal Narbeburu, the Timepieces Director who orchestrates the advanced dance between excessive jewelry, masterful craftsmanship, and mechanical ingenuity. He’s very artistic, true, but additionally an admirer of trade and its values.

Wheels Of Destiny

With a background that started not within the quiet valleys of Swiss watchmaking however within the high-precision world of automotive gearbox prototyping, Narbeburu’s journey to Van Cleef & Arpels was unconventional. “Within the gearbox, you might have wheels, so perhaps it was my future to work with mechanical watches,” he jokes.

After reducing his enamel in effectivity and operations, he transitioned into the watch trade, holding positions at a few of its most revered names, together with Rolex, Piaget, Audemars Piguet, and François-Paul Journe. However after years spent at these watchmaking manufacturers, each an establishment of types and all bastions of conventional Swiss watchmaking, he discovered himself in search of one thing extra.

“I desired extra which means behind the work—one thing with a soul,” he advised WatchAdvisor in a 2025 interview. “At Van Cleef & Arpels, I rediscovered storytelling.” One of many watches Narbeburu would have found at the moment is the usual bearer that defines Van Cleef & Arpels for a lot of: the Woman Arpels Pont des Amoureux, with its delicate female and male collectible figurines that inform the time however meet for a kiss at midday and midnight.

Trying on the watch, the story right here should be the kiss, not the time, though Van Cleef & Arpels would subsequently permit the couple to fulfill greater than twice in successive creations, together with this 12 months’s Woman Arpels Bal des Amoureux.

This narrative-first strategy is what defines the Maison’s artistic course of. In contrast to different manufactures which may construct a watch round a brand new motion or complication from a pre-existing “library,” Van Cleef & Arpels begins with a narrative. Annually, Narbeburu’s staff of watchmakers and engineers meets with the design and advertising and marketing departments to brainstorm concepts. “If there is no such thing as a story, there is no such thing as a growth,” he states unequivocally.

“What’s the story we wish to inform? We at all times begin from that,” stated Narberburu. “Annually, we have now a gathering between my staff (the watchmakers and engineers, together with analysis and growth), the design studio and the advertising and marketing staff, and to attempt to discover the story we wish to inform sooner or later.” These concepts, which might take 4 to 5 years to come back to fruition, are offered to the CEO, who selects a handful to pursue.

Olympic Video games Of Patents

Solely then does the technical “nightmare,” as Narbeburu fondly calls it, start. The design studio first interprets the story into watercolour illustrations. These are then handed to the watchmaking staff, who’re tasked with a formidable problem: inventing the mechanics to convey the story to life.

“We have now to find new tracks which don’t but exist,” Narbeburu explains, and neatly explaining how the retrograde mechanisms that mark the model’s Poetic Problems assortment got here to be. Clearly, the watchmaking course of at Van Cleef & Arpels typically requires the event of totally new issues, main to a few to 4 new patents annually—not as a objective in itself, however as a necessity pushed by the story.

“For us, it’s not a objective to develop patents. It’s not the Olympic Video games of patents!” says Narbeburu. “We develop patents as a result of a narrative is required; we will probably be obliged to develop new mechanisms to precise the tales we wish to inform as a result of (these mechanisms don’t exist already). That is so highly effective for the staff, and all people is so enthusiastic to work on this mode of discovery.”

An ideal instance of the above ethos is the Woman Arpels Heures Florales. The inspiration was the 18th-century “flower clock” idea of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, often known as Carl von Linne, who theorized that one might inform time by observing the opening and shutting of various flowers all through the day. The thought was magical: a mechanical backyard on the wrist. However the execution was a multi-year headache. Early variations had been deemed too predictable by then-CEO Nicolas Bos.

Vertical Integration

“The primary model we offered confirmed time with a programmed and common opening and shutting of three-dimensional flowers… Nicolas stated sure, that is good however might you give me one thing with extra magic?” Narbeburu remembers. “Okay, so we got here again some months after with a model with much less predictability. Nicolas stated, Sure, it’s higher, however perhaps one thing extra?”

The ultimate watch, a mechanical marvel, options 12 flowers that open and shut in three distinct, seemingly random cycles to point the hour, creating an ever-changing floral tableau on the dial. As Narbeburu reminds us, ‘seemingly’ is essential there as a result of the entire thing operates on a programmed schedule and is a tribute to very intelligent engineering. The watch can be a magical showcase of just about each métiers frequent to each watchmaking and jewelry.

“From the start, we created watches, jewelry and excessive jewelry so in our DNA, all the standard strategies are pure,” says Narbeburu. “So, we categorical and use the totally different strategies from watchmaking and jewelry making, fusing them collectively. However to do this, it’s fairly tough as a result of there are engineers, watchmakers and jewellers who would possibly all be in other places.”

This fusion of artistry and engineering is made potential by the built-in construction Narbeburu has championed. Seven years in the past, he made the decisive transfer to “verticalize all the pieces.”

“We had been growing a brand new extraordinary dial (which is a signature function of Van Cleef & Arpels),” Narbeburu remembers. “It was very difficult so we requested considered one of our companions to create simply the dial. This associate then tasked totally different suppliers to do totally different components, but it surely was inconceivable. In the long run, after they obtained the components, nothing matched. Six months earlier than the launch, I made a decision to repatriate all the pieces in-house.”

Now, on the Maison’s state-of-the-art workshop in Meyrin, Geneva, all of the métiers—engineers, watchmakers, gem-setters, enamellers—work beneath one roof. “In 5 minutes, I can get 10 folks round a desk to think about collectively tips on how to create one thing,” he says. This synergy permits them to push the boundaries of their respective crafts, understanding one another’s constraints whereas difficult everybody to go “to the restrict and past.”

Creating Effectivity

This philosophy has been the driving drive behind the model’s aforementioned Poetic Problems assortment, which issued its first chapter in 2006 to have a good time the model’s watchmaking centenary. From the celestial ballet of the Planétarium automaton to the tender kiss of the Pont des Amoureux, every watch is a miniature theatre for the wrist.

For Watches & Wonders 2025, the model revisited the beloved Pont des Amoureux with new day-and- evening variations, along with the much more advanced the Bal des Amoureux; the collectible figurines now have rather more strikingly pure and fluid actions.

For Narbeburu, the problem is not only technical but additionally managerial: balancing the artistic impulses of artisans with the pragmatic realities of deadlines. “We have now to implement the thought and follow of effectivity within the minds of individuals whose job it’s to be artistic,” he notes.

“If you obtain a drawing, you don’t know the way it is possible for you to to create the product, however you realize that 5 years later, you’ll have to launch the product,” says Narbeburu, reflecting on the truth that confronts each watchmaking outfit that should current novelties at commerce reveals. Planning for these releases needs to be methodical and rigorous.

“Day by day, you must be environment friendly. Sure, you’re artistic, however you even have deadlines to respect! You must have a plan, and you must comply with it. In any other case, you would possibly want 10 years to develop one thing, and we already take 5 years, which is sort of lengthy.”

It’s exactly this stability—between dreamy narratives and disciplined execution, between ancestral crafts and groundbreaking innovation—that enables Van Cleef & Arpels to proceed telling time in probably the most poetic manner possible.

This story was first seen as a part of the WOW #81 Autumn 2025 Problem

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