The M.A.D.3 started with a fairly simple idea; bring Vincent Calabrese into the M.A.D.Editions universe. Not only because of the Baladin complication itself, but because Vincent Calabrese somehow represents many of the things M.A.D.Editions has always tried to celebrate: independent thinking, creative freedom, a certain refusal to follow established paths and the idea that inventive mechanical watchmaking should remain accessible to a wider generation of enthusiasts.
From the beginning, M.A.D.Editions was never imagined as a traditional watch brand with a fixed visual language or a consistent collection structure. The idea was always that of a publishing house: different authors, different stories, different creative worlds brought together under the same editorial spirit. Each project comes from a particular encounter, a personality, a conversation or a shared fascination. What matters is the idea behind the object, the energy of the person involved and the feeling that the project could not really exist anywhere else. Vincent Calabrese was a natural fit.
Who is Vincent Calabrese?
For more than fifty years, Calabrese has occupied a unique place in watchmaking. He is one of those figures whose influence can be found almost everywhere once you start paying attention, even if his name is not always the first to appear in mainstream discussions around modern horology. An outsider, a creative troublemaker, what he himself once called “l’enquiquineur de l’horlogerie” – literally, “the troublemaker of watchmaking” – Vincent Calabrese spent most of his life questioning conventions, challenging accepted solutions and approaching mechanics from completely different angles.
He co-founded the famous AHCI (Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants) in 1985 alongside Svend Andersen at a time when independent watchmaking barely existed as a concept. He created the Golden Bridge for Corum, one of the most recognizable movement architectures ever designed. He developed wandering hours, tourbillons and countless unconventional mechanical systems, often approaching problems from completely unexpected angles. More than forty patents would follow throughout his career.
And yet, despite all this, there is something profoundly unpolished about Vincent Calabrese, in the best possible way. He never really approached watchmaking like someone trying to build a luxury empire around his name. What comes back constantly is simply the need to create, the curiosity, the desire to try things differently. He often explains that not coming from a traditional watchmaking background may actually have helped him. He did not necessarily know what he was “not supposed” to do, so he tried things anyway. That freedom became one of the defining characteristics of his work.
Born in Naples before moving to Switzerland as a teenager, Calabrese’s path into horology was far from conventional. There was no grand plan, no carefully constructed career strategy. In many ways, his career feels almost accidental when he tells it himself. A succession of ideas, encounters, failures, breakthroughs and reinventions.
Some ideas became defining moments in modern watchmaking. Others led him down uncertain roads. But through successes, setbacks and constant reinvention, Vincent Calabrese never really stopped moving forward. He kept creating with the same curiosity, freedom and instinctive way of thinking that had guided him from the beginning. There are stories of patents sold too early, companies going bankrupt, projects that made fortunes for others while leaving him behind financially. At one point, after an extremely difficult personal and professional period, he found himself having to rebuild almost everything from scratch. Within only a few months, he developed four entirely new movements simply to keep moving forward.
There is no bitterness when he talks about these moments. Mostly honesty – and the feeling that creating was never really a choice for him anyway.
The spirit of the Baladin
That mindset is probably what made his Baladin watch so special. The complication itself came from something relatively simple: Vincent Calabrese disliked the abrupt nature of traditional jumping hours. He found the transition too sudden, too disconnected from the actual sensation of time passing. He wanted the passage between hours to become visible and progressive.
So instead of an instantaneous jump, the hours travel slowly across the dial while the minutes continue moving normally. The result feels strangely alive. At first, the display almost looks confusing. Then after a few moments, it suddenly becomes intuitive. More importantly, it creates a completely different relationship with time than most traditional displays.It feels less mechanical in the cold sense of the word. More fluid, more human somehow.
That idea sits very naturally within the M.A.D.Editions philosophy: indeed, while M.A.D.Editions pieces can look playful or unconventional at first glance, there is something deeper underneath: a genuine interest in mechanical creativity and in making these ideas accessible beyond the very small circle of ultra high end independent collecting.
That accessibility matters a lot to Vincent Calabrese too. Unlike many independent watchmakers who progressively moved toward increasingly exclusive territory, Calabrese often tried to keep his watches relatively attainable. He was more interested in exploring ideas than building rarity around them. Ironically, that may also be part of why he never became as publicly celebrated as some of his contemporaries. Among watchmakers though, his importance has never really been questioned.
Turning the Baladin into the M.A.D.3
For MB&F and M.A.D.Editions founder Maximilian Büsser, Vincent Calabrese always represented a very particular type of creator: someone capable of changing watchmaking while remaining completely outside of traditional industry logic.
The two men have known each other for years. There had already been conversations, lunches and even attempts to collaborate long before M.A.D.Editions or the M.A.D.3 existed. Some projects became too mechanically ambitious, others simply never happened, but the relationship itself remained. Not because of business, but because there was a mutual understanding between them.
Neither Max nor Vincent ever seemed particularly comfortable following the standard rules of the industry. In different ways, both built their worlds around experimentation, instinct and emotion rather than around conventional structures. The M.A.D.3 almost feels like the moment these two trajectories finally crossed properly. The idea itself emerged naturally during a lunch shared between the two men two years ago. There was no big strategy behind it: just the feeling that it finally made sense to create something together.
The goal was not to reproduce the original Baladin exactly as it existed before. Nor was it about turning the watch into a vintage reissue. The intention was more about preserving the spirit of Vincent Calabrese’s complication, while translating it into the M.A.D.Editions universe.
That process turned out to be far more complicated than expected. The original mechanisms created by Vincent Calabrese were deeply artisanal in their construction. Extremely inventive, often developed through intuition and experimentation, but difficult to reproduce reliably on a larger scale. The M.A.D.Editions technical team therefore had to completely redevelop the wandering hours module from the ground up while preserving what made the original Baladin system so special in the first place: the fluid and progressive transition of the hours.
That wandering transition remained untouchable; everything else evolved around it. Built on a specially optimized La Joux-Perret G111 calibre, the movement was reworked in order to handle the energy demands of the complication more efficiently. The base calibre itself was refined with tighter tolerances and improved amplitude control to guarantee a more stable power reserve. The entire wandering hours module was then redesigned and reengineered for larger production volumes.
New components were developed specifically for the M.A.D.3. The technical team worked extensively on reliability, energy transmission and long term stability, while preserving the charm of Calabrese’s original approach, in particular the visual smoothness and hypnotic feeling of the original display.
Flip the watch over and another detail slowly reveals itself through the spinning rotor. Through its openings, a sentence progressively appears as the movement rotates: “Il est assez aisé de plaire aux autres, bien plus ardu d’être fier de soi”(“It is fairly easy to please others, far more difficult to be proud of oneself”). A phrase chosen like a discreet portrait of Vincent Calabrese himself. Independent, uncompromising and guided more by personal conviction than by external validation.
Visually, the watch is a balance between reinterpretation and respect. The case, designed by longtime MB&F Friend Eric Giroud, keeps certain M.A.D.Editions details while exploring a different expression of the M.A.D. universe. Floating lugs, layered architecture, domed sapphire crystals on both the front and back, and subtle mechanical details remain, while the overall silhouette balances elegance, playfulness and technical depth in a way that felt particularly natural for this project. Throughout development, the project became filled with small technical obsessions and visual details: the bombé minute ring crafted in sapphire, the integrated Super-LumiNova hidden beneath transparent elements, the layered construction of the discs, the progressive play of luminosity across the dial.
Then come the colors: a deep sunny raspberry and a powerful yet elegant blue inspired directly by some of Vincent Calabrese’s own creations. The tones immediately stood out because they carried a tension that felt very connected to his personality: elegant yet expressive, refined yet slightly unpredictable depending on the light and angle.
In the end, the M.A.D.3 Vincent Calabrese is less about nostalgia than about recognition. Recognition for someone who spent decades approaching watchmaking differently. Someone who continuously challenged conventions, not out of rebellion for the sake of rebellion, but simply because he genuinely believed there were other ways of doing things.
As Vincent says, “Do not stay on the highway. Take your own path.”
