It all begins on a polo field scorched by the sun. In India, in the early 1930s, British officers charge forward in a cloud of dust. The horses gallop, the impacts follow one another and, once again, a watch has not survived… Result: a broken glass and a dial cracked by the shock between the mallet and the polo ball. Fortunately, César de Trey, a Swiss businessman passionate about watchmaking, is attending the match. During a reception, he speaks with one of the players, who sighs… “Another one broken, it’s my third this year!” This will be the spark.
The rebirth of a watchmaking icon
The challenge given to De Trey, to imagine a watch capable of withstanding a Polo match, became the genesis of the Reverso, the Art Deco icon we know today. A watch designed to protect itself by swiveling.
Nearly a century later, this story is reborn in a new form. Jaeger-LeCoultre entrusted Olivecoat with the task of translating it into a vertical digital narrative. Jaeger-LeCoultre thus situates the Reverso within the framework of its Made of Makers™ program, an initiative inviting artists from creative fields far removed from watchmaking to reinterpret the Maison’s fundamentals. The goal: to show that watchmaking expertise naturally dialogues with contemporary creation, and that classics survive only by continuing to inspire.
Its webcomic Reverso, published in October 2025, delicately reinvents the watch’s origin with a contemporary perspective, allowing a new generation to discover this icon not through archival text, but through visual and immersive storytelling.
80% history, 20% fiction
It is through this work that we encounter César De Trey. In one of the first scenes, inspired but reinterpreted, it is not a dial that shatters but De Trey’s son’s glasses, struck by a polo ball.
A mischievous nod that translates into fiction what history tells: at the time, synthetic sapphire did not yet exist. Watch crystals were extremely fragile, and a single impact was enough to shatter them. At that time, innovations around watch glass were few, hence the need for a radical solution: to protect the glass… by flipping the watch.
The webcomic then follows the historical thread: De Trey returns to Switzerland, consults Jacques-David LeCoultre, and then the Parisian engineer Alfred Chauvot, who designs a case capable of sliding and pivoting within its frame.
This mechanism, even today, remains a feat:
– it must slide with high precision,
– pivot without any play,
– enclose the glass perfectly to absorb impacts.
At the time, it was even said that this case was as delicate to manufacture as a movement…
A black dial?
The webcomic also highlights a rarely told detail: the choice of a black dial, very useful under the sun on polo fields because it reflects less light than white. The first 1931 model thus exists in two versions, black or white, and a few colored dials appeared on request: proof that the Reverso’s personality was, from the start, resolutely modern.
Given the extent of its success, the design of the Reverso would evolve very little over the decades: the proportions, the gadroons, the Art Deco silhouette would remain almost unchanged, as if the shape found in 1931 was already perfect.
By blending archival traces and digital storytelling, Jaeger-LeCoultre brings the founding story of the Reverso icon back to life with a fresh perspective. And it reminds us that a watch born to protect itself from shocks continues, nearly a century later, to traverse the ages without ever losing its brilliance.
