The Legend of Franck Muller - Westime

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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.
Page 1 and 2: By Wei Koh illustration pk cheng PA
Page 3 and 4: CHAPTER TWO: THE ELUSIVE FRANCK MUL
Page 5 and 6: PART ONE CRAZY HOURS THE BIRTH OF T
Page 7 and 8: Franck Muller Cintrée Curvex Crazy
Page 16 and 17: “To combine the Crazy Hours indic
Page 18 and 19: PART THREE THE REVOLUTIONARY MASTER
Page 20 and 21: Franck Muller’s Cintrée Curvex M
Page 23 and 24: “WHAT WAS GREAT WAS THAT THE WATC

The Legend of Franck Muller - Westime

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?