Urwerk Explains Its Decision To Make A Ladies Complication
Haute Time interviewed Urwerk’s co-founders Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei during their visit to the world premiere of the UR-106 Lotus, the brand’s first female timepiece.
Are watch collectors in Singapore different than the rest of the world? If so, how?
They are different because a lot of them know each other. It’s a group, almost a community and they are extremely educated, more than elsewhere, where one tends to find more individual watch collectors.
How big is the market for Ladies Complications?
It is still non-existing. Still waiting to be built. We are the first contemporary watch-maker presenting this satellite hour indication to Ladies. This is the very first time! We are very positive and we are very curious to see the reaction of this growing segment of the market.
Technically, how different was it to make a woman’s watch, compared to your other pieces?
Every watch of Urwerk is very difficult to manufacture. So, we give our 100% to it. But, for sure, we have a different kind of concentration on a ladies watch, as it has to also be elegant. The carrousel has to be expressed in a elegant way, rather than a technical way. This is a different kind of motivation, but for us it’s the same type of challenge.
Why launch your first Ladies watch after all these years, why not before?
Because we had a lot of projects going on and the time just fit well into our program now. We are working on this since 5 to 6 years. We had several attempts.
The first watch we ever sold was to a woman. We did not design watches specially for men. We just designed watches for ourselves. In general, we do not really create watches for the market or for a demand, rather we try to create a demand by designing something different.
Describe the Urwerk UR-106 woman. Who is she?
There is no single woman we can define. It’s more an abstract thing, it’s more about dealing with the images you have of a woman or what you imagine of them. This makes it more challenging. “What does that mean, a watch for women?” – Is what we asked ourselves too, while making this watch. But, what is definite is that the key word is elegant, because that is how we experience women, they are beautiful, more fine, more fragile maybe. But, at the same time these are ideas you could contradict. But, it’s all an interesting process.
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