Time may feel linear to some. But the actually expansive dimensions of time require timekeeping to go in all directions of space. Watch styling is a maze of back-and-forth, styling experiments that always, always happen in the third dimension, and of course the fourth. Watches may look and feel flat, as their prefered medium is photography, a 2D technique that struggles with doing depth justice.
But IRL, they are very much alive with volume. And some push the creativity envelope further than others. They turn what is to most a band wrapped around the wrist into a sculpture of unusual, towering even, proportions. Some of them are classics in their own right, repeated through time as regular collections. Others are attempts at creating unclassifiable works of extravagance.
5. Van Cleef & Arpels Ludo Secret
A bridge over two ponds of blue sapphires ? A belt, a brooch, a pillbox? Ludo Secret is none of the above. It's a secret watch, initiated in 1934, that Van Cleef & Arpels is bringing back to the foreground. The sapphire-pavé ears hang way outside the line of the wrist. The central bridge is arched high. Its pattern stands out as it furthers the bracelet's. But then press the circular sides and the bridge lifts and opens, revealing a dial as a secret watch is expected to.
4. Toledano & Chan b1/3r
Women do not have an absolute monopoly on unusual volumes and neither does the jewelry watch segment. Mrs. Toledano and Chan have decided that there was room for architecture on all wrists. Their b1 collection is deeply inspired by the brutalist movement, more specifically the NYC Breuer building. Sharp angles, chained surfaces that soar and dive, a paperweight-like crystal that inverts the shape of the bezel, asymmetry reigns supreme on this timepiece.
3. Cartier Myst
This is not your typical bracelet. Neither is it your usual secret watch. Cartier's Myst is not made of links, or beads. It combines the volumetric feel of both, splices them into an exotic, unnameable shape that will let your mind run wild. When a timepiece prompts you into comparisons that make you connect with your own imagination, when it opens something in you, then you're in the company of art.
2. Bvlgari Giardino Marino
No patterns. No logic. No recurrence. No drawing a shape and then turning it into something easily perceived. The Giardino Marino secret watch could be what happens when Neptune decides to gather his vassals, transmogrify them into gems and wear them on his wrist, with the help of Bvlgari. Corals, starfishes, conchs, reef inhabitants tower high above the skin in a sea-mphony of colors.
1. Audemars Piguet Etablisseurs Peacock
This is the limit of photography. If you keep wondering what this image represents, if you don't see the watch, if you fail to perceive the peacock, then Audemars Piguet may very well have succeeded. This secret watch is an exploration of volumes and allegory. An exercise in creativity that Audemars is no stranger to as they have repeatedly released 3D, extremely creative timepieces such as their 2015 Diamond Punk, 2016 Diamond Fury and 2017 Diamond Outrage. These and the Peacock are birds of a feather.
