To Be Young Again

As it turns 30, watchmaking house Roger Dubuis returns to where it started and shows why it is still streets ahead of its peers.

- Words: Alvin Wong

Echoes of the late Roger Dubuis loomed large at the brand's Watches & Wonders booth this year.

Where just a year ago, the space was decorated to look like a portal of sorts into the future—awash in flashes of red and silver, with robotic dogs prancing about—the ambience was markedly different for 2025. Instead, guests basked in vantage-point views of Roger Dubuis' watchmaking facility in Geneva that covered the walls, and perused treasured watches, such as Mr Dubuis' Sympathie Bi-Retrograde Perpetual Calendar Moonphase that he wore until his final days.

Yet, to David Chaumet, CEO of Roger Dubuis, both expressions of the company—the hyper-modernistic projections of 2024 and this year's stately evocation of roots-reckoning horology—inhabit the same universe. “It is a unique place that we occupy for sure,” he says. “We have such a huge territory in which we can express ourselves and I see it as a good thing.”

For a brand that is barely three decades old, Roger Dubuis exudes the confidence—and contradictions—of a much older house. At 30, the brand is an infant in watchmaking terms. Yet, Roger Dubuis' achievements are startling. Constantly pushing the boundaries of luxury horology, the company punches way above its weight in manufacturing prowess and technical savoir-faire.