Layla

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Layla - Christophe Claret
Two years after unveiling its first ladies’ watch, Margot, Christophe Claret offers a new variation suffused with oriental colours in a 20-piece limited series.

What hopeless romantic hasn’t ever plucked the petals off a daisy to discover how their sweetheart feels about them? “He loves me... he loves me not.” A game of luck, or a game of love? With this creation from Christophe Claret, time is wooed infinitely. The classic conundrum comes to life on dial of the Layla watch, an elegant and romantic ladies’ timepiece.

Layla features an ingenious mechanism that helps, or tries, to ‘predict’ the answer to the question “Does he love me?” A simple press of the pusher at 2 o’clock brings the watch to life. With each press, a petal, sometimes a pair of petals, subtly disappears under the dial in a smooth action, perfectly depicting the delicate plucking of the flower. The eagerly-awaited answer appears at random in calligraphic letters (in Arabic) on the dial at 8 o’clock: Un peu (a little) – beaucoup (a lot) – passionnément (passionately) – à la folie (madly) – pas du tout (not at all)? The difficulty for the Christophe Claret team lay in adapting the movement of the Margot for this interpretation so as to match the right-to-left direction of Arabic script.

At each press of the pusher, a distinct, crystalline chime resonates, aurally signalling the pace of the game. The striking mechanism is one of Manufacture Claret’s signature complications, blending technical mastery with sublime esthetics, and here its hammer is adorned with a prong-set ruby. A caseband window at 8 o’clock allows clear views of it vertically striking the cathedral gong above. Pressing the reset pusher at 4 o’clock instantly makes all petals reappear around the pistil and turns the ‘sentiment’ display at 4 o’clock to an ellipsis shown by three little dots (...). The petal display and its mechanism have been awarded a patent.

The dial exudes romantic femininity. At the whim of its iridescent reflections, the natural pink mother-of-pearl dial reveals delicately engraved verses penned by the Arab poet, Qays Al Mulawwah. The poem from which these excerpts are taken tells the story of Qays, a young poet and son of an illustrious family of Bedouins, who falls in love with his cousin Layla.

The feminine gold case has a curved profile to suit even the slimmest wrist. Furthering softening the silhouette of this model, the crown is hidden from view, placed on the back next to the upper lugs. These subtle gem-set lugs feature different designs that play with the esthetics of the gems. The center of the space between the lugs is adorned with an emerald, while baguette-cut diamonds also create a scintillating play of light around the bezel.

The display back reveals the self-winding rotor, a delicately carved, flower-shaped carousel of colors symbolizing sentiments of love, with a central cabochon concealing the rotor’s ball bearings. Each one of the eight resplendent triangular precious stones denote a feeling – hope, passion, tenderness – also translated into Arabic.

 

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Christophe Claret