From muscular shapes to 3D dials, Hautlence is in an exciting new chapter
Hautlence is firmly back in the game under the stewardship of Samuel Hoffmann, who joined as brand manager in 2021. His first project was the launch of the Linear Series 1 in 2022—the watch featured a fascinating vertical jumping hour scale.
This year, he led the independent watchmaker to victory at GPHG 2023 where the Sphere Series 1 received the Innovation Prize for its spherical jumping hour. The sphere rotates on four axes and spins every hour using four conical gears.
More recently, Hautlence unveiled the Vagabonde Tourbillon Series 3 with a honeycomb-patterned dial crafted from copper-niobium superconductor material that is commonly used to build particle accelerator. It was forged by James “Black Badger” Thompson who cut the superconductor across a specific angle before soaking it in an acid bath to reveal a tight honeycomb network.
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This slew of innovative timepieces arrived after a period of relative passivity, and it‘s all thanks to Hoffmann whose previous professional stints include MB&F and Tag Heuer. Before joining Hautlence, he admits that he was already impressed by its watches. “I knew about its signature TV-shaped case. I knew that it approaches [watchmaking] differently. I was, and am, fascinated by its engineering. I like how it is so creative,’ he says.
This creative energy will only amplify moving forward. "You can continue to see more of what we‘ve been doing, keeping in line with three pillars: the TV case, the three-dimensionality, and using motion to tell time. Everything else is fair game, from the materials to how we approach time-telling,” Hoffmann asserts.
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