Tribune des Arts - June 2010
Marco Cattaneo
There is simply no room for luck or chance in the vicinity of Pascal Raffy, and even less so for disorder. Within this perfectly controlled environment, it is thus almost astonishing to see the smoke rising from his cigar in random twirls. One would almost like it to follow the rules of the place just as everything else does, floating upward at successive right angles. “How can you expect to assemble a beautiful movement, if you aren't obsessed by details?” says Pascal Raffy.
He has short-cropped hair and bright eyes that shine with a special sparkle when he speaks of his three children, or of a particular dream watch. This is a man who resembles his timepieces, driven by a concern for details, by an obsession with perfect finishing and rigorous demands, but also by a form of harmony, of exuberance and of controlled passion. He loves genuine luxury and displays a different preference for haute couture over off-the-peg wear, and for small series rather than mass production.
He is in complete symbiosis with Bovet, the company he took over in 2001 and of which he is steadily rebuilding the heritage, brick by brick. He has revived the collections, passionately creating complicated models and one-of-a-kind dials adorned with miniatures painted on enamel or mother-of-pearl. He has restored it to its rightful status as an authentic manufacture by buying up the company that supplied its complications and which he has christened Dimier 1738. He has even given it an historical heart by installing part of its activities in the Château de Môtiers of which he became the proud owner in 2007.
Law studies and serenades
He was still a child when he first discovered Switzerland, after being exiled from Beirut where he was born 13 years earlier in the summer of 1963. His family, which originally hailed from the French Ardennes region, had been established in the “garden city” for two generations, but the war put an end to this Lebanese episode. The Raffys, or “Raffins” as they were still called in the 17th century, travelled to Switzerland to join a family member in Sion. They only stayed for one year before setting off for Paris, where Pascal Raffy learned lessons in both independence and law during his university studies there. The 18 year-old was determined to cope on his own and rented a studio in the Saint-German-des-Prés district: a 15 square-metre kingdom on the 7th floor of a building with no elevator on the Rue des Saint-Pères. He studied by day and worked at a pizzeria by night, where he served tables while signing classic Italian songs and leading Japanese, American and German tourists in rousing and heavily accented choruses of “O sole mio”.
It was in Paris that he met his wife and decided to follow in his in-laws' footsteps in the pharmaceutical industry. “I ran a medium-sized laboratory”, he recalls, but after around ten years he decided to give up his career to devote more time to his children. The youthful (38 year-old!) “pensioner” settled in Givrins, a charming village in Canton Vaud overlooking Lake Léman. Why Switzerland? “We are rootless”, explains Pascal Raffy. “I returned to Beirut in 1994, but the city had changed too much and I couldn't live there any more. It was in Switzerland that I wished to set up home”, driven among other factors by the memory of having fallen under the spell of the tiny village of Vernamiège, perched around 15 kilometres above Sion.
Charmed by the crown at 12 o'clock
This relocation took place in the early 2000s, and his banker presented him with several opportunities, including various watch companies looking for investors. He was fascinated by this field, and remembers that “as children already, we enjoyed weekly Sunday master classes in fine watchmaking, taught by my grandfather André”. And as soon as his financial means permitted, he began building his own watch collection.
When he discovered Bovet, with its bow and its crown at 12 o'clock and its delightfully curved case, he fell in love with the company he immediately referred to “as the last princess of fine Swiss watchmaking”.
Pascal Raffy nonetheless decided to invest massively from 2001 onwards in order to give his teams the means required to develop the Bovet and Dimier brands on both the manufacturing and commercial sides. Within less than 10 years, he had secured the loyalty of an international retail network and thus advanced in pursuit of a fundamental objective: that of returning to China, where the history of the company set up by Edouard Bovet in 1822 first began. The young man from Neuchâtel emigrated to Canton and set up a watch business which prospered rapidly, to the extent of seeing its timepieces marking off time at the very heart of the Forbidden City. One simply could not dream of a more prestigious past.
