Meet The Tag Heuer Innovator Growing Diamonds On its Dials
Carole Kasapi, movements strategy & haute horlogerie director at Tag Heuer, is a pioneer in her field, responsible for some of the world’s most scintillating timepieces
If you wear a luxury watch, there’s a decent chance that Carole Kasapi has had a hand in making its heart beat. In the course of her career, Carole’s hands have tinkered with the complex inner workings of watches by Renaud & Papi, Piaget, Van Cleef & Arpels and Ulysse Nardin, including 15 years at Cartier where she spearheaded its in-house movements. In 2020, Carole joined Tag Heuer as haute horlogerie director, and the French luminary – known in watchmaking circles as the ‘Queen of Complications’ – is steering the brand towards ever more impressive innovations.
“Innovation is really in the roots of the maison, even in its name – ‘Technique d’Avant Garde’ – the spirit of innovation is still very present every day,” says Carole. In watchmaking, this is the only way to take great strides – little by little. “We try to push boundaries every day, to find new solutions to improve our watches. We don’t want to innovate just to innovate, or just to say it’s new – we want a new timepiece to have a real client advantage, a purpose, such as improving accuracy, durability, or shock resistance.”
Within the maison’s 2024 novelties, it was a technical exploration of lab-grown diamonds that allowed its engineers to trailblaze – the 44mm Carrera Plasma features a scintillating polycrystalline lab-grown diamond dial, the result of a sum of crystals grown as one, which creates an extraordinary scattered light effect. The 36mm Carrera Plasma and 36mm Carrera feature the same dial complemented by 2.5 carat coloured diamond crowns – a total impossibility with a natural diamond, and only made possible with cutting-edge technology.
Carole is not short of tools to turn such fantasies into reality, thanks to Tag Heuer’s remarkable research institute. It is here that an elite team of physicists, engineers and mathematicians develop the maison’s latest innovations. Upon joining the maison, Carole revelled in visiting the institute for the first time. “We have machines and specific microscopes that don’t exist at other Swiss maisons. It felt like I was visiting NASA. It’s only afterwards that you realise you have to work out how to build the Apollo programme,” she quips. “Often in watchmaking we still have this image of an old guy, a watchmaker on top of a mountain, but that’s not watchmaking today.”
Carole’s legacy does, however, stretch back to the days when this was closer to the truth. She has the industry running through her veins, with her father, mother, and brother all connected to the world of horology. She began her watchmaking studies at the age of 16, moving from Paris to Chaux-de-Fonds, where her passion for making timepieces do more than tick took hold. In her current role, Carole’s passions extend far beyond the watches themselves. “It’s very satisfying when I have the chance to meet clients – when you see your client is sparkling, that’s a magical moment. My projects and my people still make me excited every morning, and although I’ve been at Tag Heuer for over three years now, at the scale of watchmaking that’s nothing,” she laughs. While the major maisons unveil a flurry of novelties each year, the innovations within them are much longer in the making. “You have to be patient,” says Carole. “With patience, you can do so many things to push the boundaries. When you’re a pioneer, it’s always the same mantra – we will see.”
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s December 2024 Issue