Out Of This World: Jaeger-LeCoultre Looks To The Heavens For Inspiration
Elizabeth Doerr explores the Swiss luxury watchmaker’s newest delights here
Astronomical phenomena lie at the very origin of how we have learned to measure time. However, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s latest oeuvres for the female wrist – the Rendez-Vous Dazzling Star and the Rendez-Vous Star – use quite another heavenly anomaly to enchant us in 2022: the unpredictability of the shooting star. The erratic specks of space dust that shoot across our clear night skies serve no other purpose than to fill our hearts with wonder. And so do these two new timepieces from Jaeger-LeCoultre’s lovingly redesigned Rendez-Vous collection.
The Rendez-Vous Stars are small masterpieces of technical and artistic savoir-faire that recreate the enchanting celestial event thanks to an entirely new invention that is activated by the movement of the wrist (just like winding the movement). The shooting star appears on the dial at random moments, usually four to six times per hour. Its unpredictability makes it even more enjoyable as the enchanting display does not allow its owner to look away. Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 734 comprises the Calibre 899 base movement, which takes care of the timekeeping, while a very thin, but rather complicated module that includes a regulator – a component for regulating energy usually found in a minute repeater – recreates the uncertain motion of the heavenly element of surprise.
Design director Lionel Favre and his team were inspired by the beauty of the night sky, but as they delved into what became a passion project they found that these two watches were more inspired by emotion, luck playing a large part. “The moment of happiness that you have when you see a shooting star is the feeling we were aiming for,” he says. However, ‘randomness’ is not possible to recreate in the gears and springs of a watch movement, which are based on principles of physics. So it took the team almost three years to perfect this watch.
The shooting star mechanism, which moves the star across the dial thanks to a complex combination of the motion of three aventurine disks, may also be summoned on demand by turning the winding crown several times. “To provoke this feeling of luck, the sighting of the star must be rare,” Lionel explains.
These two watches were made right from the beginning with women in mind Lionel confirms. “We have a habit of making useful complications,” he says. “Here we wanted a new complication able to create an emotion.”
The visuals of these two watches are nothing short of striking, in particular that of the Rendez-Vous Dazzling Star, whose 36 mm 18-karat rose gold case is embellished with 36 brilliant-cut diamonds set in place using the prong (griffe) setting, which adds a higher degree of sparkle. A classical jewellery technique introduced in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Rendez-Vous collection in 2019, it remains an exquisite testament to the brand’s gem-setting expertise. Fine gold claws hold the diamonds high, allowing light to pass through them from every angle, maximising the presence of each stone while minimising visible metal. A second row of smaller diamonds put in place using the descendeur setting style animates the watch immensely.
“This is a very refined detail,” Lionel explains of the two rows of diamond setting that play with opposition. A high jewellery designer in the past, he now keeps a very watchful eye on originality and composition at Jaeger-LeCoultre. “Having small diamonds and large diamonds together makes the reflection different, and the different types of settings – griffe for the larger and descendeur for the smaller – create interest. The descendeur setting, with engraving on the side, provides a fully different feeling. When you put them together, one highlights the other. It’s a question of feel. If we had used only the griffe setting, the piece would have looked a lot more vintage; the second row provides more modernity. It’s a question of details.”
The upper surfaces of the lugs are also set with the dazzling gemstones and an inverted diamond is set into the crown. The Rendez-Vous Dazzling Star’s three-part dial is made of sparkling aventurine glass to recreate the night sky.
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Rendez-Vous Star is a masterful example of rare craft work using miniature painting, the art of realistically reproducing an artwork on a smaller scale. Here the artisans used lacquer to achieve an aquarelle look for transparency on sapphire crystal over the aventurine disks. “We wanted clouds and a foggy atmosphere,” says Lionel, “so we had the idea to create different levels.” The three sapphire crystal disks give the visuals of this watch amazing depth and beauty but also made it complicated – particularly setting diamonds directly into the sapphire crystal using UV glue.
Nonetheless, the real pleasure for stargazers lies in the anticipation of spying a shooting star in the night sky. For owners of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous Star and Dazzling Star, this anticipation must feel much the same: there is no better way to pass the time than staring at one of these tiny masterpieces in the hopes of catching the moment that the fickle star travels across the dial.
Photography by Efraim Evidor. Styling by Nour Bou Ezz
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s June 2022 issue.