The Legend of Franck Muller - Westime

By Wei Koh
illustration pk cheng
PART 0NE: THE BIRTH OF THE
EMOTIONAL COMPLICATION
PART TW0: EMPIRICAL TIME VERSUS
EXPERIENTIAL TIME
PART THREE: THE REVOLUTIONARY
MASTER BANKER

Franck Muller Long Island Crazy
Hours Color Dreams

CHAPTER TWO:
THE ELUSIVE FRANCK MULLER
The genius is touched by God.
He is struck by lightning. He
sees angels in the architecture,
spinning in infinity. He reaches
out and touches them. But like all geniuses,
Franck Muller is elusive. And for months I
chased his trail. But Franck was in the
wind. Every now and then, he’d come up
for air and it would feed back to me. A
fortnight ago, Franck was spotted playing
chess on the beach with Gary Kasparov like
in the Fellini film. Then Franck was
reworking the Fibonacci sequence with Bill
Gates to derive a mathematical formula for
cleaning up the BP oil spill. Last week,
Franck was seeking out the Four Noble
Truths in an ashram in Kathmandu. But
where was he now?
Several people have asked me my
motivation for chronicling the history of
Franck Muller. And to them I’ve tried to
explain that, in many ways, it is impossible
to have an appreciation of the modern
horological world without understanding
Franck Muller’s contribution to it. Franck
Muller literally made Swiss high
watchmaking relevant to a whole new
generation. He is our era’s first and
most successful watchmaker; he is of such
a level of technical inventiveness and
commercial acumen that he can rightly be
called the new millennium’s Abraham-
Louis Breguet.
These were the thoughts careening
through my brain as I ploughed steadfastly
up a Thai mountain. With each pedal stroke
of my bike, lactic acid shot through my
bio-machinery. So, it was easy to confuse
the phone ring with the auditory
hallucination that signals the onset of heat
exhaustion. Collapsing by the side of the
road, I heard it again.
“Franck Muller would like to see you
tomorrow,” came the voice.
“I am in Thailand,” I wheezed.
“No problem, Franck Muller is also in
Thailand.” Now I was convinced that I was
lying on the cool sheets of a Thai hospital
bed beneath the canopy of an oxygen tent
as my brain played out fantasies on its
own stage.
“He’s just at his villa at the Amanpuri
and would like you to come tomorrow.
From your location, it is a short flight and
we’ve already prepared your ticket.” The
omnipotence of the Franck Muller machine
was staggering. I touched my skin to check
that a GPS tracking device hadn’t been
injected beneath it. But even as I did, I
knew how this would play out. When genius
summons you, you go. I closed my eyes to
enjoy the momentary respite of the shadecooled
concrete beneath my head.
BAPTISM
“Welcome to the Amanpuri,” called out the
cheery voice of the housekeeper. I
staggered up the stairs with my bicycle,
looking expectantly for a figure in cool
white linen and a Panama hat conjuring up
alchemic wonders of gear wheels and
spring bars out of thin air.
“Where is Franck Muller?” I asked as I
surveyed the two empty swimming pools
and the equally empty house.
“Franck Muller is at the beach, sir,” came
the reply.
The buggy bounced through the
sprawling estate of the private residences
at Phuket’s famous Amanpuri, the
temporary homes of the global elite fleeing
the icy clutches of Europe for days of
bronzed skin and a state of mind best
expressed in the pointillist warmth of
Henri Matisse’s Luxe, Calme
et Volupté.
Arriving on the beach, I was without a
word whisked to a beach chair, provided
for with a soft gossamer bathrobe, a beach
towel, an ice-cold exotic fruit daiquiri, and
a light Bolivar Belicosos. I had everything.
Everything, except Franck.
“Do you know where I might find Franck
Muller?” I asked the small nut-brown
man, turning my chair to face the afternoon
sun like a human sundial.
“There’s Franck Muller!” he exclaimed,
waving toward the clear blue sea and the
vast gold horizon. For a moment, I thought
I’d stumbled upon a disguised Bodhisattva,
replying to what he thought was a
Zen parable.
“Yes,” I replied. “I understand, Franck
Muller is everywhere and all things.
He is…”
“No,” the diminutive man cut me off, “he
is swimming in the ocean. There…” He
gestured far off the coast to a man floating
serenely on his back, his face covered by a
massive white Panama hat. “There’s
Franck Muller.”
I called his name. I waved. I jumped. To
no avail. Franck was in the wind. He was
floating in the vast blue infinity as he saw
angels in the architecture, spinning in
infinity, reaching out to touch them.
I sealed my digital voice recorder in
a Ziploc, placed it under my pink
commemorative Giro d’Italia hat, and
began the long, slow swim toward my

Franck Muller Long Island
Totally Crazy Color Dreams
human objective. With each stroke toward
Franck Muller, I grew in exhaustion, while
Franck remained serene, bobbing on the
insouciant current.
Then, as I neared him, as if through some
form of telekinesis, he sensed my approach
and turned to meet me, his face beaming
with health, his smile dazzlingly white, his
voice booming over the waves.
“Welcome, my friend!” He bellowed in
his distinctive baritone. That same voice
struck me with its native intelligence each
time I interviewed him. Immediately, he
launched into a conversation about watches:
what he felt they represented to human
culture, why we are eternally fascinated by
these tiny machines with heartbeats.
I quickly extracted my voice recorder
while trying to tread water with one hand.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this, but
what happens is, you go in a circle.
The result was my slow, constant pirouette
beside him like some mentally deficient
synchronized swimmer. Franck was
kindly oblivious to my unconventional
aquatic behavior.
And in the hour we spent moving
inexorably toward shore, I was forever
changed by what he told me. I had come to
discuss one thing. Before Franck Muller,
the term “complication” was used only
to describe the way a watch could
communicate some empirical measure
of time. Although Franck had
reintroduced the fascination with traditional
complications, he had also given birth to an
all-new type of complication that today
represents one of the most significant
revolutions in contemporary horology.
Franck used his horological skills
to create the world’s first emotional
complication with a watch whose sole
purpose was not to provide an ever
more arcane measurement of time,
but to transform time itself into an
emotional language.
With this watch, he disrupted our
perception of time, uprooted it, eliminated
its plodding finality, and reinvented time as
a revelatory experiential medium.
He did all this with an extraordinary
timepiece called Crazy Hours, whose legacy
still resonates as strongly today as when it
was first born. This is its story. And as it
turned out, in the sea experiencing a
baptism of sorts, was the perfect place for
me to hear it.

PART ONE
CRAZY HOURS
THE BIRTH OF THE
EMOTIONAL COMPLICATION
At first glance, the Crazy Hours
watch — with its dial an
incandescent blaze of seemingly
random and scattered numbers, scattered
with the same spontaneity as Jackson
Pollack’s brushstrokes — seems miles
apart from the ordered precision of
Muller’s tourbillon watches. Yet there is a
salient link between these timepieces in
that their primary objective is to provoke
human emotion.
Franck Muller explains, “In many ways,
the Crazy Hours was an extension of a
simple philosophy that was born when I
created my first tourbillon wristwatch. In
1801, when the tourbillon was first made, it
was created as a precision device. It was
made to fight gravity when pocket watches
are in the vertical position. But today, it has
no meaning as a precision device as
wristwatches adopt innumerable positions
throughout the day. Their raison d’être has
become that they are simply beautiful to
look at, a wonder of micro-mechanics and
watchmaking art.”
While Muller was instrumental in the
revival of the tourbillon, he is quick to
underscore the rationale for a tourbillon in
this wristwatch format. He states, “It is
essentially an emotional device. This is why
I decided to put it on the front of the watch.
Later, others realized the emotional value
of the tourbillon and followed me.”
When asked if, in an age filled with
micro-electronic instruments, the primary
purpose for all horological complications is
their emotional value, Muller is quick to
agree. He states, “Similarly, a minute
repeater was born to serve a pragmatic
function. In the days before electricity, it
was an ordeal to get out of bed, light a
candle and read what time it was, so the
minute repeater, a watch that literally
played time, was created. Today, light is
available at the flick of a switch. Time is
displayed on electronic clocks that are
illuminated at night. So today, a minute
repeater has no real pragmatic function. It
is simply a beautiful device, and emotional
art form. A transcendent instrument that
changes time into music!”
While Muller had by 2003 become the
uncontested “Master of Complications”,
ushering in 36 world premieres and patents
in a space of only 20 years, he began to
think of another purpose for his
extraordinary watchmaking skills. He
explains, “Tourbillon, perpetual calendar
and minute repeater — these types of
watches are called complications, because
they are complicated to make and because
they add levels of complication to
timepieces. But I began to think of ideas to
create complications that corresponded to
the needs of modern society.”
One watch that emerged from Muller’s
desire to express the needs of the
contemporary world in his watches was the
Master Banker — a response to the realities
of travel and business conducted over
multiple time zones. But as he thought
deeper about it, he began to visualize an
all-new type of complication, one whose
primacy of purpose had less to do
with calculating minutiae and more
with transforming time into an
emotional language.
Muller explains his rationale, “One thing
which I was thinking about was that all the
information shown on traditional
complications could be read off your
computer. As such, I wanted to create a
type of watch that offered an experience
you could not have with an electronic
device. This watch must evoke emotion, it
must remind you that watches were living
objects and not soulless electronics. In
order to do this, I had to examine the
fundamental concepts behind civil time.”
But Muller’s moment of revelation for his
new watch would only come accompanied
by an unconventional baptism in water.
A WATCH WITH NO RULES
Muller laughs as he recalls the unexpected
birth of the Crazy Hours. It all started
because of his aversion to the cold. He
states, “I don’t like the cold. And so, every
New Year, I seek out warm places to
celebrate with my family. My second wife
and I had a baby born on 21 December
2001. When he was one year old, we
decided to bring him on a vacation for the
New Year. I discussed destinations with my
friend Jean Todt because when traveling
with a one-year-old, you are somewhat
limited in your options. Time passed quickly
and I had to quickly choose a place to go.
The thing is, I never go any place alone. I
love family and so when I travel, I bring my
sister, her husband, her children, my

HOW THE FRANCK MULLER
CRAZY HOURS WORKS
While traditional timepieces indicate time in a clockwise manner over the course of a day, the Franck Muller Crazy Hours seems to
depict time in random manner. The hour hands leap around the dial from '1' to '12' throughout the day, jumping five places instead of one,
while the minute hand functions normally, moving clockwise in a regular manner as the hour passes.
Franck Muller
Long Island Crazy
Hours Color Dreams

Franck Muller
Cintrée Curvex Crazy
Hours Tourbillon
with diamonds
mother, my wife and my new baby. You see,
family is primordial. It is the most important
thing for me!”
Desperate for a warm climate while
ushering in a new annum, Muller persisted
in seeking his friends’ advice.
He recalls, “Jean Todt told me to go to a
particular resort named the Royal Palm in
Mauritius. He said, ‘It is perfect, you can
go directly from Geneva to Mauritius
without changing planes so it will be no
problem for your baby.’
“At this point, it was November and so I
telephoned the resort, but they told me they
were completely full and they refused to
accommodate me. I told this to Jean Todt
who immediately called the director. The
director of the Royal Palm then called me
and told me, ‘Look, Mr Muller, every year at
the Royal Palm, we have the same clientele.
I can do nothing because every single room
is booked.’”
Muller replied, “Mr Director, look at the
wrists of your clients. I am sure they are all
wearing Franck Muller watches, so I hope
you can allow me to join my clients and
friends. He came back saying, ‘OK, let me
see what I can do, and if I can make it work,
I will call Jean Todt.’”
Muller chuckles, remembering, “At this
point, it was becoming something of a
challenge to me to go to this resort, and the
thing about me is, I cannot back down from
a challenge. Watchmaking is a series of
challenges that you compel yourself to
overcome. And so I bring this way of
thinking to my life as well. The other thing
was that this resort was left over from the
French colonial era in Mauritius. It was run
by the French for the French. And while I
love the French people, sometimes, the
French have a very narrow way of thinking.
They concern themselves only with the
French and simply ignore the rest of the
world. The more I thought about it, the
more determined I became to bring my
family to the Royal Palm!”
After weeks of persistent calling, Muller
succeeded. He states, “Finally, the director
called me back and wanted to know what
rooms I needed. I requested three mega
suites, one for my mother, one for my sister
and her family and one for my wife and
baby. He hemmed and hawed, but eventually
gave me the rooms.”
With that, Muller assembled his entire
family and they set off with every belief that
they would embark on what would be a
delightful and memorable holiday.
Only half of this equation would prove
to be true.
Muller recalls, “We arrived tired but
grateful to be in such a beautiful climate
in Mauritius and at such a lovely hotel
situated in Grand Baie. My family and I were
hungry, so we went to the dining room.

Franck Muller Long
Island Crazy Hours
Tourbillon
Immediately, I recognized many friends.
The first person I saw was Marcus Margulies,
who was my distributor in London and
someone I love. He presented me to many of
his friends and I immediately felt at home
amid so much warmth and kindness.”
Unfortunately, Muller’s reverie would
not last long. He exclaims, “Suddenly, I was
pulled out of this state of comfort by the
hotel director. He explained that the Royal
Palm was an icon and that its restaurant was
the most prestigious dining establishment
and had strict rules. One of these rules is
that at dinner, black tie is strictly required
for the men. I didn’t know what to do. I had
not packed a tuxedo as this was a beach
vacation. I went upstairs to my room and I
found a black jacket. But I didn’t have a
black bow-tie.”
Ever the creative genius, Muller soon
hatched an audacious plan that hinged
around his capacity to pass off total
absurdity with total conviction.
He says, “As it happened, I looked around
and saw that there was a white bathrobe
and hanging from it was a cloth belt. So I
quickly looped this around my neck, tied it
into a bow and went back downstairs. The
“Here we were in a tropical paradise
and yet, we were clinging to as many
rules as we could because somehow
it made us feel better, more superior
to others”
director saw me and looked shocked. He
immediately exclaimed, ‘Mr Muller, what
kind of bow-tie is that?’
“I replied to him, ‘Pardon me, but do you
know Gianni Versace?’ He said, ‘Well, I do
not know Monsieur Versace personally, but
of course I know OF him.’
“I stated emphatically, ‘Well, Gianni
Versace is one of my best friends and this is
his bow-tie from next year’s collection,
which has not even been shown to the public
yet! In three months’ time, it will be shown
on the runways of Milan and Paris. It will be
the biggest trend of the year, but it is a secret
so you must not tell anyone.’
“He replied, ‘Of course, Monsieur
Muller,’ winking conspiratorially at me. The
director looked immediately appeased and
brought us to our table. Inside, I was
thinking that my friend Gianni would have
particularly appreciated this joke, as he
actually wrote an autobiography called Men
Without Ties. You see, he never wore a tie
and didn’t like them at all. I thought if he
were here with me, he would be laughing. I
was thinking how surreal this environment
was. Here we were in a tropical paradise
and yet, we were clinging to as many rules as
we could because somehow it made us feel
better, more superior to others.”
But Muller pushed aside any negative
thoughts in order to spend time with his
family. Sadly, these thoughts would soon
come flooding back.
He remembers, “When we were seated, I
asked for some water and the director
clicked his tongue disapprovingly. He
explained, ‘Monsieur Muller, here at the
Royal Palm, we do not serve water, we serve
only Perrier.’
“At this point, I was becoming a bit
irritated. So I pointed to the wine menu and

Franck Muller Cintrée Curvex
Crazy Hours

Franck Muller Long Island Crazy Hours
Color Dreams with black diamonds
OPPOSITE Franck Muller Cintrée
Curvex Totally Crazy Color Dreams
said, ‘Mr Director, I am sorry I do not
drink Perrier, so instead I will order wine.’
As it happens, I love good wine. So without
consulting the menu, I said, ‘Instead of
Perrier, we will all drink Château Pétrus,
so please bring a bottle for each person at
the table, one for my mother, one for my
sister, one for her husband, etc.’
“The director was shocked but he
quickly complied. This continued as a
routine each night. I would put on my
bathrobe belt as a bow-tie, go to the
dining room and order Pétrus and never
Perrier.” Muller and his family began to
feel the warmth of the Indian Ocean sun
on their skin insinuating itself into their
souls and for a while, they were happy.
Says Muller, “Finally, it was the day
before New Year’s, and very early in
the morning, I heard an insistent
knock on the door. It was the director.
Without saying good morning, he
immediately said, ‘Monsieur Muller, we
have a problem.’
“I was nervous, I thought that there had
been some natural disaster or some kind
of storm coming and we needed to
evacuate the hotel. Instead, he said,
‘Tonight, it is New Year’s Eve and I want
to know what you are going to drink
this evening.’
“I was shocked that he had disturbed
me first thing in the morning, and so I
replied, ‘But that’s not your problem. Why
are you disturbing me with this question?
Don’t you think it depends on what I
eat tonight?’
“He persisted, so finally I said, ‘OK, I
will have the Pétrus this evening.’
“He replied curtly, ‘Aha! It is my
problem because you have drank all of the
Pétrus in our cellar and there is not a
single bottle left for anyone else. I need to
know what you want to drink this evening,
so I can see if we can accommodate you.’
He seemed irritated, perhaps someone
had told him that my bow-tie was not
really from Gianni Versace’s collection for
the next season.”
Muller by this point was truly beginning
to chafe at the rules, the vestigial influence
of Mauritius’ French colonial past, which
seemed determined to darken his mood.
It would be that evening that things finally
came to a head.
He states, “That evening, I arrived
again with my black jacket and my
bathrobe-belt tie. It was a special evening,
so all the women were requested to wear
white. My wife, mother and sister were all
dressed in white. We were seated around
the pool and I looked around and saw all
these beautiful French women dressed in
gorgeous white dresses completely
resplendent in jewels, glistening in their
diamonds. Immediately, the director
came to me and to appease him, I said,
‘OK, this evening we will drink Cheval
Blanc.’ Because it was New Year’s Eve, I
had suggested to Marcus and to some of
the people we had become friendly with
that we combine our tables and have one

Franck Muller Cintrée Curvex
Crazy Hours with diamonds
big party together.
“The director approached and said,
‘This evening is New Year’s Eve. But here
at the Royal Palm, we celebrate in a
civilized manner. We cannot put together
these tables. Everyone must have his
correct place at individual tables. This is
our protocol.’
“I said, ‘Wait a moment. All of us at
this big table are friends. When we are on
the beach, we all sit together and laugh
and enjoy each other’s company. Why is
it that for New Year’s Eve, we cannot also
be together in this beautiful location?
Why must you impose these meaningless
rules on us?’
“The director replied, ‘Because that
is the way things are done here and it is
my decision.’
“I turned to Marcus Margulies and
said, ‘OK, just before midnight, come to
my table with two Cohiba cigars.
Light one and keep the other one for me.
I will give you a spectacular New
Year’s surprise.’
“So, at five minutes to midnight, Marcus
came over with the cigars. Literally, at the
stroke of midnight, I got up from the table.
And in front of everyone, I took off my
black jacket, I took off my bathrobe-belt
bow-tie. As I did this, I thought about
the loopholes and hurdles the director
had scattered in my path for no
reason at all. Then I continued until
I was completely naked.
“By this time, I was genuinely angry.
I thought about how I hate when human
beings create rules just to rob others of
pleasure. Then I walked over to the pool
and jumped in. And as I emerged in the
beautiful night air, and as I regarded
the beautiful women in white around me,
as I looked up at the stars overhead,
the sounds of the director protesting
faded away.
“I thought to myself, I hate rules. But,
in many ways, time itself is a rule. It is
imposed on man. I want to create a watch
that has no rules, but that always finds the
right time regardless. And I will call this
watch ‘Crazy Hours’.”

PART TWO
CRAZY HOURS
EMPIRICAL TIME VERSUS
EXPERIENTiAL TIME
To simply call the Crazy Hours a
watch is to do it a disservice. It
is less of a timepiece in the
conventional sense and more of
a radical reinvention of the wristwatch.
What was once a precision device has now
become no less than an art form, a vehicle
for emotional expression and a statement
of personal philosophy so strong that its
influence resonates even to this day, seven
years after its creation.
In the swimming pool, at the time it was first
conceptualized, Franck Muller looked up into
the night sky and swore to eschew all that had
come before. He vowed to invent a timepiece
that would shake the very foundations of
horology by reinventing timekeeping —
transforming it from a civil code into a pure
emotional language. But, to do so, he would
have to first delve into the very roots of time as
we know it.
Muller explains, “Time was an invention
of man to organize society so that social
discourse and business could take place.
Our lives became compartmentalized and
divided so society could function. It is for
no small reason that Geneva is the
epicenter of time. Two hundred years ago,
Geneva was one of the most important
commercial cities in the world. The
Germans, the Spanish, the French and the
whole world came to Geneva to exchange
merchandise. As such, civil time as we
know it was created in Geneva. The traders
passed through Geneva and they arranged
for meetings. But the problem was that
setting up meetings was similar to trying
to establish a meeting in the Middle East.
When you arrange a meeting with someone
in the Middle East, the concept of time is
very loose. When you say, ‘Let’s meet on
Tuesday,’ it can mean Tuesday this week
or Tuesday next week, or the week after or
in a month.
“Similarly, the difficulty in Geneva was
reconciling these different concepts of
time. So Geneva was the first city in the
world where a law was imposed that
people must give specific times and dates
for meetings. The history of precise time
was therefore born in Geneva, where a
law was passed that said, ‘If someone
makes a commercial meeting for a specific
date and time, they are obligated to honor
it!’ As you imagine, watches became
very important for anyone setting foot
in Geneva.”
As a result, the Swiss became obsessed
with precision and chased the elusive goal
to make watches more and more accurate.
This was entirely natural, because
embedded in Swiss culture was an
underlying pragmatic need for accuracy.
Any frequent traveler who has visited
Geneva in the last 200 years can attest to
this. Says Muller, “This culture still exists
today. This is the reason a train in Geneva
that states it will leave at 12:01 will leave
precisely on time, not one minute before
or after. Switzerland has become the nation
of precision.”
But Muller’s feeling was that civil time,
the 24-hour day, binds man into a certain
routine that he cannot escape from. He
explains, “We are all formatted from the
time we are born to follow a routine, to
follow certain rules. At a certain time we
wake, at a certain time we eat breakfast, at a
certain time we take our bath, at a certain
time we work, at a certain time we go home,
we eat dinner, we go to bed.”
Ironically, it took a son of a Genevan to
revolutionize the concept of time and to slip
from its imperial clutches. Says Muller,
“After a certain time, this becomes so much
a routine that human beings are robbed of
their spontaneous nature, of their creativity.
You are told you should only make love to
your wife in the evening, but according to
what rule? Shouldn’t something like this be
regulated not by the rules of society but the
rules of the heart? We are so programmed
in our heads that our lives become a
structure that we feel we cannot escape. We
become so encoded that we are moving
mindlessly from one moment to the next,
never reveling in the present to truly enjoy
the experience.”
Indeed, the only time in our lives when
human beings bestow unto themselves the
freedom to enjoy life to its fullest, to exist
and revel in its full sensual glory, is during
the period that has become known in
colloquial parlance as the “holiday”.
Interestingly, it is uniquely during this
period, rooted in ancient pagan ritual
periods of thanksgiving and celebration,
that the human heart is given its full measure
of freedom. For Muller, the mental attitude
evinced during the holiday is something
that is at the very core of the Crazy Hours.

Franck Muller Cintrée Curvex
Crazy Hours Tourbillon

“To me, in modern
culture, we are
often too much
rooted in the
past or obsessed
by the future”
He states, “Why call it Crazy Hours?
Because the Crazy Hours watch had to be a
statement that you can do what you want,
whenever you want. It had to be a watch
that told people that life is precious and that
you must enjoy each fleeting moment. It
was a declaration that you should exist in
the present and not constantly be thinking
about the past or the future. It had to be a
rupture from the structure of empirical
time, an escape from the mindless regularity
that we as human beings have become
enslaved to. This idea came to me at that
moment in the swimming pool in Mauritius,
where I had come with my family to be on
vacation, where we thought we could do
what we wanted. But instead, we were met
only with rules and more rules. The Crazy
Hours is an escape from rules.”
And while at first glance, it might be
easy to dismiss this philosophy as
promiscuously sensualist, the very
concept of the Crazy Hours has strong
spiritual undertones. Muller states, “I’ve
always liked the Buddhist parable of the
monk who falls down a cliff. Beneath him,
he sees a starving tiger waiting to eat him.
Above him, he sees a snake slithering down
to bite him, then suddenly, just in front of
him, he sees a perfect strawberry. Slowly
and with great deliberation, he reaches out
and plucks this strawberry and tastes how
delicious it is. To me, in modern culture, we
are often too much rooted in the past or
obsessed by the future. Unfortunately, the
traditional format for a watch only
encourages this. On the dial, you see all the
time in front of you and all the time behind
you. And so, you become obsessed with the
past and the future, and never appreciate
the moment you are in. For me, it was very
important that the Crazy Hours be a watch
in which the past and the future are not
visible. As such, you have no choice but to
be in the here and now, and to appreciate
the present — this is something people have
forgotten how to do!”
THE WORLD’S FIRST
EMOTIONAL COMPLICATION
Imagine a watch where the dial adheres to
no laws of order of either God or man. The
cold, rational intellectualism of the 12-hour
dial is dispensed with, and in its place, a
whirl of randomly strewed digits each
claiming their precious real estate with a
free-wheeling assertion of self. At the 12
o’clock position, the number eight — the
Chinese symbol for luck — stakes its claim
with heady optimism. The Crazy Hours
dial, as the name implies, bears no logic, it
defies rationality; it could, if expanded onto
canvas, be found in the Pop repertoire of

“To combine the Crazy Hours indication with
the tourbillon, to me, is to double the visual
pleasure of the timepiece”
Robert Rauschenberg or Jasper Johns, a
vivid joyous defiance of the cold,
emotionless oppression of civil time.
Says Muller, “In the Crazy Hours, there
appears to be no sense as to what hours
come next, and so, you are compelled to
focus on the moment you are in. In this
way, this watch was the world’s first
emotional complication in that it uses a
mechanical complication to delight and
engage its owners.”
But when asked what use a watch that
cannot tell time has, Muller replies, “Ah,
but you see, human beings are logical
and they will always find their way.
Similarly, with the Crazy Hours, the hour
hand on the watch will always jump to
the right time. With the Crazy Hours, I
have found a way to deconstruct and
restructure time.”
The Crazy Hours complication finds its
roots in a watch Muller created in 1986, the
world’s first free-oscillation tourbillon
wristwatch. What was unique about this
timepiece was that it featured not just a
precision device intended to combat
the erosive force of gravity, but also a
jump-hour indication. There are two types
of jump-hour watches: watches that
feature an aperture in which the hour is
displayed, and watches with traditional
hands that, instead of a sweeping,
leap from one hour index to the next,
jumping precisely at the stroke of each new
hour. The Crazy Hours is similarly a
jump-hour watch using a traditional hour
hand. The distinction is that instead of
leaping one index at the stroke of each
hour, it leaps forward five places. As such,
an examination of the seeming disarray on
the Crazy Hours dial sheds light on the fact
that the numeric jumble is actually spaced
such that each subsequent number is not
one but five spaces in progression around
the dial.
Upon the release of the Crazy Hours in
2003, the watch-collecting world was
universally stunned. The advent of the
Crazy Hours, a watch whose sole purpose
was the abstraction, deconstruction and
reconfiguration of time with the intent to
shock and delight otherwise emotionally
disengaged owners, has been associated
with the first Impressionist paintings that
divorced themselves from replications of
reality, focusing instead on the sublimation
and expression of emotion as their primary
objective. The Crazy Hours is the first work
of watchmaking Impressionism.
Today, many brands have laid claim to the
ground of emotional complications. But
each of these brands owes its very existence
to Franck Muller and the revelation he
experienced beneath the stars of Mauritius,
the determination it created in him to
fabricate a timepiece that would break our
enslavement to time and unearth a purer
form of existence, sensuality and
appreciation for life.
TOTALLY CRAZY
Adding the practical advantage of a date
indicator, the Totally Crazy watch adds
another startling pinwheel of fiery dial-side
animation with a date indicator that echoes
the seemingly random order of the legendary
Crazy Hours dial. This time, the secret lies
in the date hand leaping seven indices to
always find the next number in the
progression through the month. Nothing
offers more entertainment than the
sudden and simultaneous jump of the
hour and date hand precisely at the stroke
of midnight.
CRAZY HOURS TOURBILLON
The Crazy Hours Tourbillon combines two
of Franck Muller’s iconic achievements,
the dial-side tourbillon and the Crazy
Hours complication. As with many of his
timepieces, the Crazy Hours Tourbillon
was inspired by a friend; in this instance,
Tay Liam Wee, the group executive
chairman of Sincere Watch and the head of
Franck Muller’s distribution in Asia.
Says Muller, “Liam Wee is very innovative
and it was his idea to create a watch with the
ultimate dial-side animation. To combine
the Crazy Hours indication with the
tourbillon, to me, is to double the visual
pleasure of the timepiece. On the one hand,
you have the total folly, the seeming wildness
of the Crazy Hours indicator, and on the
other hand, you have the world’s most
famous precision device.” But the two
complications work together beautifully,
both combining their technicity and
bravado to create what to many connoisseurs
is THE ultimate Franck Muller timepiece.
Adding a beautiful touch of whimsy, the “8”
index has been divided into two in a King
Solomon-like act of horological prowess,
with half of the index placed on the dial and
the other half integrated into the
flying tourbillon’s cage. This “8” serves
both as an index and a seconds
indicator, completing a full rotation once
every minute.
Regardless of which Crazy Hours
complication you choose, every watch from
this series is intrinsically linked to Franck
Muller’s ultimate act of horological
rebellion. To gaze at the dial of any of these
timepieces, be it the Crazy Hours, Totally
Crazy, or Crazy Hours Tourbillon, is to be
reminded of the fact that time itself is the
most precious commodity in life.

Franck Muller Cintrée
Curvex Totally Crazy

PART THREE
THE REVOLUTIONARY
MASTER BANKER
As his brand continued to
grow, one of Franck’s greatest
challenges was to use his
watchmaking ability to suit the
needs of the contemporary consumer. The
greatest reality for the modern businessman
relates to constant travel. The majority of us
spend our days on a perennial transglobal
trek from one head office to the next.
The miasmic haze of being lost amid
differing time zones can at times become
overwhelming, and in this context, it is the
watch that becomes a veritable Prometheus,
bringing light to darkness, and order to
chaos. It was precisely with the objective
of illuminating the world of the constant
traveler that Franck created one of his most
legendary timepieces, the Master Banker.
Amazingly, this watch was actually
created in tandem with an actual banker
friend. Franck recalls, “One of my close
friends is Paul Tange, the son of Kenzo
Tange, the father of contemporary Japanese
architecture and one of the key proponents of
structuralism. At Institut Le Rosey, the oldest
private boarding school in Switzerland, he
befriended an Iranian boy who became a
huge banker in London. I got to know them
both as they spent a lot of time in Geneva.
One day, we got together for lunch and this
banker mentioned that he was curious about
Watchland, so I brought him on a tour. As
we walked through the grounds, he told me,
‘Franck, I want to buy a watch from you, but
the watch I want has not yet been invented.’
This intrigued me immediately. He first
explained his idea in 1995, but it wasn’t
until 1998 that I introduced the watch.
Why? Because the way I work is to put
ideas in my head and then work on solving
their problems in a natural way. It’s how
I’ve always worked. I love to talk to people
of all the different nationalities to learn
about their cultures and their perceptions of
time, and in this way, I am always receiving
inspiration. Of course, afterwards, you
must figure out technically how to resolve
the problems. What he told me was this.
‘The world has changed forever. I spend
almost no time in my actual office. One day
I am in London, the next day in New York,
the next day in Tokyo. What is important to
me is speed, how quickly I can reach a new
destination, how quickly I can react to the
opening of the stock market there. When
I wake up and I look at my watch, I want to
immediately know when the market opens.
Because in the time it takes me to figure
out the time, I could have made or lost a
fortune. So what I really need is a watch that
is actually three watches, to simultaneously
tell the time of three different cities where
I am doing business. But I want to have
all three time indications controlled by
a single movement, and I want complete
hour and minute indicators for each time
zone… I may need to speak to my wife, who
may be in Los Angeles; at the same time, I
need to make a business call to Paris; yet
I must also keep track of my meetings
where I am. In addition, this watch must be
incredibly simple to use.’”
Understanding that this was a vital
opportunity to bridge the gap between
traditional watchmaking and the needs of a
rapidly modernizing culture, Franck leapt
at the challenge. He recalls, “I said to him,
‘Look, what you are asking for is extremely
complicated, because it is as if you are placing
three clutches in a single movement. It is as
if you are putting three clutches into a single
car motor. I can make just one watch like this
for you, but it will cost a fortune. If I can make
several watches with this invention, it will be
very affordable because I can amortize the
cost of research and development over an
entire series.’ He agreed.

The Franck Muller Cintrée Curvex
Master Banker is one of Franck
Muller's most iconic achievements

Franck Muller’s Cintrée Curvex
Master Banker

second time zone
third time zone
reference time
This is how it works
The dial of the Master Banker has two small subdials with the second and third time zones
displayed in hours and minutes. When you pull the crown to the first position and you turn
it clockwise, it sets the subdial on the left (the second time zone); when you turn it in the
opposite direction, it sets the subdial on the right (the third time zone). When you pull the
crown to the next position, it changes the central hands (for local or reference time). Each
of the three time zones can be manipulated independently via the crown alone without
changing the others.
So, I began thinking about this and there were many
possibilities as to how to achieve this goal. But I began
to reject many of my ideas because the mechanisms
were too complicated. One of the major goals of true
watchmaking is to achieve your aim with total integrity,
but by using the minimum number of parts available. For
example, if you can reduce the parts you need to make
something like this triple time-zone complication from
200 parts to 20 parts, you are 10 times less likely to have
anything go wrong. That is an enormous margin of safety
that you owe to the consumer who has placed his faith in
your timepiece. If you look at the most famous clocks or
watches, as I had the opportunity to do when restoring
pieces for Patek Philippe’s museum and others, you
realize that the best watchmakers always have this at the
forefront of their minds. The goal is to achieve the best
result with the least parts possible.”
Amazingly, inspiration came to Franck in the most
unlikely of places. He was overseeing the addition
of two buildings at Watchland when, suddenly, he
stopped in his tracks, in front of a daunting piece
of heavy machinery. He states, “I was looking at a
Caterpillar tractor, and the basic underpinnings of its
mechanics gave me the idea of how to solve the puzzle
of the Master Banker. What is incredible about this
solution is that if you were to take 100 watchmaking
engineers and put them in an office together, such is the
simplicity of the mechanism I arrived at that they would
never find it; or even if they found it, the first 99 would
all come up with far too complicated solutions.”
Franck knew that as complicated as the watch was,
he had to create something easy to use. It was at this
moment that the concept of operating all three timezone
displays, as well as the date, with a single crown
came to him. Franck adds, “Later, we augmented the
watch to have day and night indicators for the second and
third time zones as well. What was great was that the
watch seemed complicated, but it was fantastically
simple to use. If a client becomes frustrated with
utilizing his watch, he will stop using it. Everyone could
comprehend it. With this model,we began to sell 5,000
more watches per year — more than what we had
created before.”

“WHAT WAS GREAT
WAS THAT THE
WATCH SEEMED
COMPLICATED,
BUT IT WAS
FANTASTICALLY
SIMPLE TO USE.
EVERYONE COULD
COMPREHEND IT.
WITH THIS MODEL,
WE BEGAN TO
SELL 5,000 MORE
WATCHES PER YEAR
— MORE THAN WHAT
WE HAD CREATED
BEFORE”
THE LEGACY OF FRANCK MULLER
Now, 18 years after the creation of his
brand and more than a quarter-century of
groundbreaking innovations, the legacy of
Franck Muller still resonates as clearly as it did
the day Franck first dreamt of striking out on
his own.
He demonstrated to the world that even
in a time when mechanical timekeeping may
have been anachronistic, on an emotional
level, it was more relevant than ever.
To achieve this, Muller understood
that he had to usher in an allnew
vision for high watchmaking.
He knew that he had to make traditional
complications relevant by binding them
on a cellular level with daring, innovative
aesthetics. Muller also knew that he
would have to single-handedly invent
an all-new language for mechanical
watchmaking, one where the primacy of
intent was to connect with customers on an
emotional level.
To achieve this, he had to uncover
the hidden truth in how human beings
perceive time. He then invented all-new
complications to represent these emotional
truths. While de’ Dondi’s work was to
uncover the laws of science that govern our
universe, Franck Muller’s seminal work
would be to unveil the hidden truths that
rule the human heart and mind. In this, he
has been groundbreaking, and in this, he
has demonstrated his visionary capacity. H
The Franck Muller Cintrée Curvex Master
Banker Tourbillon is a combination of two
of Franck Muller's iconic achievements,
the world's first wristwatch tourbillon and
the triple time zone complication

The original Master Banker featured
vertical subdials for the second and third
time zones; in the Cintrée Curvex Master
Banker Lunar, these have been shifted
to the three and nine o'clock positions
to accommodate a date and moonphase
subdial, as well as day and night indicators
for the second and third time zones