TIME Will Tell

A Van Cleef & Arpels collection of extraordinary watches marks the hours and minutes with exquisite precision while also weaving tales of all that can happen—love, wonder, surprise—in the moments in between.

- BY STELLENE VOLANDES

Van Cleef & Arpels's Poetic Complications collection captures the spectacular magic of time.

VAN CLEEF & ARPELS LADY FEERIE, LADY ARPELS JOUR NUIT, LADY ARPELS HEURES FLORALES, AND LADY ARPELS BAL DES AMOUREUX AUTOMATE WATCHES PHOTOGRAPH BY JOEL STANS STYLED BY LINDA HEISS

There is, of course, the primary purpose of a timepiece: to mark the minutes and the hours in a day, to keep us on schedule, to alert us to a moment, to tell us when it has passed. But what if a watch not only told the time but expressed the possibilities of all that could happen within it? What if it could be a timepiece, a novel, a short film, an animated postcard, a meditation on the meaning of it all, all at once? From their debut almost 20 years ago in Switzerland, the timepieces of Van Cleef & Arpels’s Poetic Complications collection have defied expectations. To paraphrase one American dreamer: Some see watches as they are and Ask, “Why?” Some dream watches that never were and ask, “Why not?”

Why not have a watch that keeps time with the playfulness only a double retrograde movement can provide while also telling a tale of love and reunion? Why not harness the skill of the Van Cleef & Arpels artisans to use grisaille enamel to evoke the chiaroscuro of a starlit Paris night? Why not have them handcraft a bed of cobblestones in white gold to set the scene for a couple's tryst in an open-air dance café? And why not build an automaton movement that brings the lovers together for a kiss at noon and at midnight—or at the wearer’s whim, with the push of a button? The answer to these inquiries around innovation, beauty, savoir faire, and delight: the Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux Automate watch. A name that demands to be spoken while in Paris—in love, wearing it.