Since its introduction in 2024, the Promenade collection has occupied Czapek's most intimate register: a dress watch built for reflection rather than show, where the dial becomes a canvas for storytelling. With L'Écume des Jours, that canvas turns for the first time toward literature, borrowing its name, its imagery and its spirit from one of the most singular novels in the French language.
Boris Vian, an Improbable Engineer
Boris Vian (1920 to 1959) remains one of postwar France's most restless creative minds: a trained engineer, a jazz trumpeter, a songwriter and a novelist, moving between disciplines with the same ease he moved between pseudonyms. Published in 1947, L'Écume des Jours tells the story of Colin and Chloé, a love undone by illness and by a world that bends under the weight of its own imagination. Two inventions from the novel have entered popular culture in their own right: the pianocktail, a piano that composes a cocktail to match the mood of the music played on it, and the water lily that takes root in Chloé's lung, a metaphor for a love as fragile and as inexorable as the illness it comes to represent.
A Dial Between Water Lilies and Music
The dial of L'Écume des Jours began as a study in pearled mother-of-pearl. Over the course of its development, the project evolved: Chloé Desbiolles, a designer at Czapek, proposed a dial built around the novel's two central motifs. A ring of piano keys circles the flange, a graphic nod to the pianocktail, Colin's cocktail-composing instrument, and at the 4:30 position, signature of the Goutte d'Eau model, a water lily flower marks the seconds, in tribute to Chloé.
The dial is realised in collaboration with two partners of the Czapek manufacture, Donzé Cadrans and the atelier MD'Art. The base Goutte d'Eau enamel dial is produced by Donzé Cadrans, its logo applied in a silvered powder decal. A craftsman at MD'Art then laser-lowers the recesses that will receive the mother-of-pearl ring, its black keys hand-painted, and the jade disc set beneath the seconds display, both fixed by hand. The jade is further laser-worked to form the seconds track. The water lily seconds hand is laser-cut from titanium, a metal chosen for its light weight, allowing the hand to rotate freely, then finished in miniature painting. During assembly with the movement, it is set at the centre of the jade disc.
“I have always been an avid reader of Boris Vian,” says Xavier de Roquemaurel, CEO of Czapek & Cie. “His fantasy and imagination, but also his rebellious and surrealist spirit, ran through my youth and impressed upon me the idea that anything was possible. It was quite naturally, as we were finishing a watch we were then thinking of launching, its pearled mother-of-pearl illuminating the eye, that the name L'Écume des Jours came to my mind. I contacted the Cohérie Boris Vian, if only to ease my conscience, rather like tossing a message in a bottle out to sea. Imagine my surprise when I received a reply almost immediately, and discovered behind that approach people who shared Czapek's creative language. We are only the reflection of what we love.”
In-House Calibre SXH5.1
The piece is presented in a 38mm stainless steel case, fitted with a domed sapphire crystal and a sapphire caseback, both treated with an anti-reflective coating, and water-resistant to 50 metres. It is delivered on a dark blue nubuck strap, with a stainless steel Milanese mesh bracelet available as an alternative. Visible through the sapphire caseback, the automatic Calibre SXH5.1 features a Swiss lever escapement and a variable-inertia balance fitted with four gold inertia-blocks, beating at 4Hz (28,800vph). Power comes from a micro-rotor in recycled 950 platinum acting on a single barrel delivering 8Nmm of torque, for a 60-hour power reserve. The movement measures 30mm in diameter and 4.2mm in height, comprises 127 components and 26 jewels across seven skeletonised bridges inspired by François Czapek's nineteenth-century pocket watches, finished with open-worked ratchets, sandblasted black bridges, bevelled angles and straight-grained sides.
A Paris Prelude
Ahead of its release, L'Écume des Jours will be presented to the international press in Paris at the Moulin Rouge, where Boris Vian's apartment is located. The press will first be guided through the apartment by Nicole Bertolt, who oversees the writer's heritage, followed by a conference and a lunch on site. Each of the 18 pieces will be delivered in a special edition box containing a copy of the novel that gave it its name.
The Czapek Promenade L'Écume des Jours will be available through Czapek authorised retailers worldwide, the boutique in Geneva and czapek.com.
