Iconic INNOVATIONS

Exploring the world of iconic watches reveals legendary collections that are deeply embedded in the industry's identity and continually growing; perhaps for very good reasons

- WORDS JOSH SIMS

Eric Giroud laughs when presented with our challenge: design an iconic watch. “It's not possible,” exclaims the celebrated independent watch designer, who has created pieces for Vacheron Constantin and Harry Winston, Tissot, MB&F and Romain Jerome among many others. “I have been asked to do that before though, especially for new brands because every watch company wants to have an ‘icon’. But you can’t do it, because it’s the product of factors outside of the designer's control”.

More on this later. Before then, to speak of an iconic watch - and the industry really does love to do that to excess - is to speak of a kind of watchmaking canon, like the greats of literature or music. It is a tacitly agreed and, through media and retail, constantly reinforced selection: among them the Omega Speedmaster and Rolex Submariner, the Cartier Tank and the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe Calatrava... The selection verges on being cliché - and, yet sometimes it seems to be constantly expanding — but maybe for a good reason.

That is because this is not simply about ‘timeless’ design, with its suggestion of inoffensiveness and innocuousness. A so-called timeless style can look like so many other watches. To be disruptive is harder: both to design and to sell. Certainly many of those watches considered iconic broke a mould when launched: designer Gerald Genta’s Royal Oak reimagined stainless steel and an industrial aesthetic as luxury; Rene-Alfred Chauvot's Reverso provided an engineering solution to protect the dial of his Reverso; Swatch built on quartz’s affordability in pop plastic. And so on. As Max Busser, founder of MB&F points out, so many watches now considered trail-blazing and iconic were so radical that they were commercial flops when launched.