"WHAT FLOWER IS IT?"

Van Cleef & Arpels' Timepieces Director, Pascal Narbeburu was recently in Singapore for a conversation on the Maison's poetic complications. The house's watch expert found time to tell L'OFFICIEL SINGAPORE what sets The Poetry of Time pieces apart and how he encourages creativity in watchmaking at Van Cleef & Arpels

- IAN LEE

Hi Pascal! You've been with Van Cleef & Arpels for nine years now. What is one thing that has remained constant in the Maison's timepieces, and one thing that has changed the most?

What is the constant is the way in which we develop our watches — it has always been a constant. If we don't have a story [that we want to tell through the timepieces], there would be no novelties. In that way, the story pushes us to find new mechanisms to express the story that we wish to develop. For us, it is not the Olympic Games of patents or the Olympic Games of new mechanisms, but we develop mechanisms where they are needed for the storytelling. This makes us different.