Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
In 1837, Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Younger opened Tiffany & Co. in New York as what was then known as an emporium, promoting imported family items like umbrellas, cleaning soap, silverware, fragrances, and gloves. It might be a decade earlier than the shop supplied its first timepiece, additionally imported. It might be one more 20 years earlier than it might debut a marvel: its first in-house watch, the Tiffany Timer, which is at the moment celebrating its two hundredth anniversary.
This was all defined to me this week on the eleventh flooring of the Tiffany Landmark flagship, on Fifth Avenue at 57th Avenue, the place I handed a Basquiat on the best way to the elevators. Upstairs, I used to be proven to the tastefully appointed personal salons, which generally host spendy VIPs (a tip for the one percenters who store there: It serves one of the best rattling iced espresso I’ve ever had the respect of tasting). Right here, I started to understand that tracing the historical past of watches is a bit like bingeing a number of seasons of The Gilded Age — it appears like escapism but in addition packs in a social-studies lesson. Take these first Tiffany chronographs: They have been made nearly completely for males and lived principally of their pockets; watches in your wrist wouldn’t come alongside for a lot of extra many years. In the meantime, it was thought unbecoming for a lady of that period to concern themselves with issues of time, although she probably wanted to if she needed to correctly run a family. Within the late 1800s, nevertheless, girls did begin to carry timepieces designed extra as ornament, resembling chatelaine watches that hung from the waist or timekeepers styled as pendants or necklaces. (However none practically as giant as Taste Flav’s.)
A gold-and-enamel lapel watch from 1887.
Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
In the present day, Tiffany employs seven archivists to review and file the model’s deep historical past, stalking public sale homes for vintage items to enhance the gathering. They’re additionally a useful resource for uplifting future designs. On show have been dainty bejeweled and enameled watches, some first proven on the 1878 World’s Truthful in Paris, all delicately etched with fantastic carvings. They have been used to encourage this 12 months’s choices.
From left: A watch from 1898. Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.A watch from 1915. Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
From high: A watch from 1898. Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.A watch from 1915. Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
Which introduced me to the primary occasion — a walk-through of the model’s 2026 timepiece releases. Watches, in fact, are not mere keepers of time however an entire outlandish trade tied up with concepts of standing and energy, now fed by festivals, commerce exhibits, and their very personal influencers prepared to investigate each bit down to each final lume dot. What is going to they see this 12 months? Whereas Paloma Picasso’s and Elsa Peretti’s curvy, demure, and sensual creations for Tiffany are notorious in design circles, this 12 months the corporate tapped the extra florid work of Jean Schlumberger, creator of the Chook on a Rock design.
Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
Along with Schlumberger, enamel is the massive story right here, expressed within the launch of three wristwatch variations all that includes a glittering diamond dial enclosed in a revolving ring of enamel in Tiffany blue or white impressed by Schlumberger’s Croisillon bangle. The blue model is crafted by means of the painstaking technique of paillonné, by which layers of enamel are utilized to skinny sheets of silver, then fired a number of occasions to attain a delightful cylindrical form (like a fab doughnut) and luster. One member of the workshop was readily available to indicate me the silver sheet — so delicate it might simply fly away if it caught a breeze — and the mortar and pestle used to grind glassy blue stones right into a liquid till it turns into a sandy substance. As she so poetically put it, you understand it’s able to be utilized when the crystals sing. Alongside the outer circle is one other Schlumbergian contact: 12 delicate 18-karat gold “cross-stitches,” a signature motif of the designer, a reference to his household’s historical past in textiles, and a logo of the bonds in a single’s life. For that cause, it’s additionally a preferred wedding-ring design.
From left: Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
From high: Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.Photograph: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
Regardless of the watches’ apparent opulence — one mannequin with a diamond-encrusted strap simply prices greater than most properties within the U.S. — the spinning outer band not solely imparts a way of freewheeling dynamism but in addition whimsy, a Schlumberger hallmark. I used to be proven different fashions impressed by his work, together with one with the Chook on a Rock positioned lovingly on a watch face (the rock, it needs to be stated, is a fats ol’ diamond). Quiet luxurious these watches will not be.
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