Interpreting a famous design is one of the biggest challenges facing any designer, but for Arnaud Chastaingt, director of the Chanel Watchmaking Creation Studio, it’s a daily task. Since taking on the role in 2013, following a decade styling watches for Cartier, he has been responsible for defining — and sometimes redefining — the visual identity, aesthetic direction, and technicality of Chanel’s expanding timepiece universe. The new J12 Superleggera Caliber 12.1, the collection’s first unisex sports watch, is his latest iteration.
“I follow [the industry], but I’m not obsessed only with watches,”says Chastaingt, in his soft, French-accented English. Seated on a plush sofa in a softly lit room inside the Chanel booth at Watches & Wonders Geneva, Chastaingt is explaining his approach to design and how the new J12 fits into the wider world of Chanel. “Everybody wants to put us in a box,” he says. “Who are you? Are you a watchmaker? Are you a fashion house doing watches? We don’t think about that.”
Instead, Chastaingt’s job is to keep an eye on the bigger picture: what Chanel is, where it came from, and where it’s headed. The J12, Chanel’s line of unisex ceramic watches, plays an ever-more important role in that conversation as the brand continues to evolve. The J12 was the brainchild of Jacques Helleu, Chanel’s longtime artistic director, who designed its first watch, the Chanel Première, in 1988. Inspired by the sleek, aerodynamic lines of America’s Cup J-Class 12-metre racing yachts — hence the name — and high-performance race cars, the jet-black ceramic case and unisex design of the J12 set it apart immediately when it was revealed in 2000. “The J12 wasn’t born with a marketing brief,” Chastaingt says. “It was an obsession. That’s why J12 is very important for us: it’s the definition of our vision, born from a totally creative act.”
By the time Chastaingt took over Chanel’s watchmaking atelier, the J12 had established the storied Parisian maison as a legitimate presence in luxury watchmaking, but he had no intention of coasting. For its 20th anniversary in 2020, Chastaingt meticulously modified 70% of the watch’s components, the most significant of which was the Caliber 12.1, a Swiss-made, chronometer-certified automatic movement. This year, Chastaingt continues to push the J12’s design in new directions with the Superleggera, a 42 mm watch whose contrast of red and metallic accents against black ceramic evokes the look and feel of a high-performance sports car.
The J12 Superleggera Caliber 12.1 is perhaps the most masculine addition to the collection so far, and to Chastaingt, it fits seamlessly into the story of the 116-year-old brand. “We are a house that everybody thinks of as feminine, but Gabrielle Chanel was using a lot of masculine codes in her creations — it’s a very powerful feminine brand built on inspiration from the men’s world,” he says. “We don’t really think about gender. We think about style.”
