REBEL WITH A CAUSE

'Vandalising' vintage watches and creating new ones with a quirky yet thoughtful narrative-meet Romaric André, the creative force behind seconde/seconde/

- Somya Rauthan

I am obsessed with my works, I work with people who are obsessed with theirs, everything is secondary.” It is this quote that greets you in the ‘About’ section of artist Romaric André’s website seconde/ seconde/, just under the line, ‘This idea of swapping hands on vintage watches saved me’. Both are enough to give an insight into André’s approach to his work, which, while some have called horological art, purists have gone as far as to call vandalism. What began as a personal project that entailed swapping the seconds hand of vintage watches for cool, quirky designs that André himself made, has evolved into collaborations with watch brands to lend his inimitable touch to limited editions.

Just this year, André tied up with Frederique Constant to create a version of the Slimline Moonphase Date Manufacture (read about the Classic Date Manufacture in our cover story, P. 54), a watch with randomly placed hour markers and handwritten typography—both aspects seek to mimic the imprecision that people are prone to. Another collaboration was with Timex, the second time André joined hands with the brand, for the ‘Loser’ watch, in which he jumbled and manipulated the brand name to read 'MY — EX’ as well as created a seconds hand that indicated the 'L for loser' sign. Last year, with Atelier Wen, his design breathed life into 36 dials that had gotten rejected, symbolised by three 24K gold stitches that represented a repair and reuse approach. For his 2023 collaboration with Furlan Marri, he replaced the small seconds hand with a heart-shaped one to show how mechaquartz watches have a beating heart, too.