At Van Cleef & Arpels, Watchmaking Begins with a Story

At this year’s Watches & Wonders presentation, Van Cleef & Arpels unveiled its latest chapter in the ongoing exploration of “Poetry of Time,” turning its gaze skyward with creations rooted in celestial storytelling. Anchored by new additions to the “Poetic Complications” collection, now celebrating two decades, the presentation traced the movement of the heavens through intricate mechanisms and métiers d’art—from dual time zone displays and secret watches to richly detailed dials crafted in enamel and handmade Murano aventurine glass to shimmer like the night sky. A highlight of the offering, the Midnight Jour Nuit Phase de Lune, brings together a day-night display and an animated moon phase, capturing the shifting rhythm of the cosmos through both technical precision and visual poetry.

This year’s debut builds on a legacy that stretches back more than a century, when the Maison first began translating astronomical phenomena into wearable form. Across the new pieces, time is not simply measured but staged—through rotating discs, on-demand animations, and richly layered scenes that evoke love stories, constellations, and the passage from day to night. Each creation underscores the brand’s commitment to narrative-driven watchmaking, where innovation is guided equally by imagination and engineering.

Among the seven new timepieces, the Midnight Jour Nuit Phase de Lune stands as a technical centerpiece, pairing a 24-hour rotating day-night display with a moon phase complication that can be animated on demand, revealing a shimmering celestial tableau in black aventurine glass. Elsewhere, the Midnight Heure d’ici & Heure d’ailleurs introduces a poetic interpretation of dual time zones, with synchronized jumping hours and retrograde minutes unfolding across an asymmetrical dial designed to evoke travel and movement. The maison’s jewelry savoir-faire emerges in the Ludo Secret, where a 1930s-inspired bracelet conceals a dial beneath a sapphire-set clasp, while the Perlée watch transforms its signature golden beads into a luminous frame for a cosmic blue dial enriched with guilloché and diamonds.

Narrative takes a more figurative turn in the Lady Rencontre Céleste and Lady Retrouvailles Célestes—two dials that recount the myth of Vega and Altair through intricate enamelwork, gemstone setting, and miniature painting—capturing both longing and reunion against a star-filled sky. Together, these creations reflect the broader philosophies of “Poetry of Time” and “Poetic Astronomy,” where watchmaking becomes a vehicle for emotion and imagination, uniting mechanical invention with artistic craft to evoke the mysteries of the cosmos on an intimate, wearable scale.

Behind these technical achievements is Rainer Bernard, Director of Research and Development for Watchmaking, who has been with the maison since 2011. With a background in mechanical engineering and a career spanning fiber optics and high-powered laser development before entering the world of haute horlogerie, Bernard approaches watchmaking as a collaborative, interdisciplinary exercise—one where storytelling, craftsmanship, and engineering operate in tandem. 

Ahead of Watches & Wonders 2026, Whitewall traveled to Geneva to preview the brand’s latest watches and speak with Bernard about transforming abstract ideas—like love, nature, and the cosmos—into mechanical works of art, and why, in this universe, innovation always begins with a story.

Behind the Scenes at Van Cleef & Arpels

WHITEWALL: How did you come into the Van Cleef & Arpels world? Why was it an intriguing place for you to work? As you mentioned, you’re dealing with enchanting designs, not just what most of the public would consider a traditional engineering role to work with.

RAINER BERNARD: I was always interested in machines—little trains, bikes, technical stuff. Being curious, I disassembled many things to have a look at how it’s done. For me, engineering was a means to create something. I’m not interested in engineering by itself; it’s a tool—like you have a knife to cut some vegetables. Engineering is a tool to create the technical base of something. That was always in my mind. 

I’m very much interested in literature and opera, and stuff like that. Being an engineer helps me uncover a part of a product creation process, where engineering plays a role. When we do watches, we have always this balance between the story, which drives everything, and the engineering, the craftsmanship, and the creative studio doing the drawings and designs. It’s like a married couple, but we are three, working together to actually create the story. There is no one leading. We work and decide together where we want to go. To come back to engineering, it’s just a tool to do that. 

It’s not incompatible to be engineer and be interested in creating motion about fairies transforming into butterflies, making them move around. It’s just a tool to do that.

WW: What attracts you to the brand itself? You could be an engineer at an automobile company or a technology firm, but you’re working for high jewelry company that also produces watches, and the bases of its production are enchanting motifs and designs and incredible materials. Why Van Cleef & Arpels?

RB: What’s attractive to me is that the creations we make is in the domain of art. It’s not just a utility product, like a glass or something. It’s a piece of art. It’s high jewelry—the jewelry watches we make, the poetic complications, they’re pieces of art for me. I’m in the art business. And I can help create products with my knowledge and with my team’s knowledge, and together with other teams, which is very interesting. 

At Van Cleef & Arpels, we do things differently. I don’t like to repeat things, so the Maison gives us a possibility to work on new ideas and new stories each time. And because the story is driving what we do, each time we have to come up with new solutions in order to make it work. It’s never repetitive. It’s like letters forming words, and we use the words to create new poems. But it happens that sometimes there is a word missing. So, we have to create new letters to create a new word, and we recombine it in a different way, which has never been seen before. This is what intellectually is very stimulating and interesting. 

The maison supports great creativity by allowing curious people to work together—and this is just awesome. 

Engineering in Service of Storytelling

WW: You were speaking earlier about creating new technicalities to move the timepieces, and needing new patents to protect them—but that the creation alays comes first and the patent comes later. Can you elaborate on that?

RB: We are very centered on making the story work. For example, we had a watch that we presented two years ago where there is a fairy collecting flowers in the morning. Our dream was to have, on these plic-a-jour leaves, diamonds representing dew drops. That was the idea, that was the story. But we couldn’t do it— you cannot drill a hole in a enamel because it will explode—and it drove us crazy that we couldn’t do it. 

So, we looked around for about two years to find a way how to make that—just to have diamonds as dewdrops for this leaf for this watch. That’s how innovation works for us. We are pushing hard to find solutions to realize elements of the story which we couldn’t do so far. The patent is just a piece of paper afterward. 

And then we say, “Wow! This is brand new. Nobody did that so far. This is so cool. Now, let’s protect it because this is our creation. We made that. We came up with that!” It’s so cool. But it’s always a consequence. You have the story, pieces we don’t know how to do, we find a way, and then we make the patent.

WW: Can you give me an example of something that was created in service of the story for the new pieces that we are seeing now? 

RB: The double use of differentials in the series, that was never done. We never did it before. Here, we had to come up with a complete new architecture to make it happen for the story, because the story was very clear in our mind and we didn’t know how to do it. Now, it looks…simple. This is where technique is at the surface of the story. But will we talk to the client about this? Maybe not. Because is it interesting for the client? Maybe not. When the client says, “Well, the disc turns around 24 hours and the moon phase changes constantly, this is really cool. But when I do it on demand, it doesn’t. How is this possible?” And this is what we like to create—this surprise. 

You have lovers that actually go closer and then they lean over for a kiss, and you don’t see how it’s done. Very smooth without shaking. So how is this done? Or the wind in the watch with the brise d’été. How do you move the flowers with this fine stem? This is not possible!” Well, yes, it is. 

This is the best compliment we can get. Of course, if somebody is interested, we tell them how it’s done. At first, you let them operate the magic, and the fact that it’s just there and that it’s simple to use and you don’t really have to know how it’s working, it’s great. It’s like using a car—you drive it, but there’s so much going on that you don’t care. It just drives. 

Here, you see the animation—you see the kiss, and you say, “Wow. Cool.” 

Simplicity as Mastery at Van Cleef & Arpels

WW: You mentioned that it looks simple. Earlier you said, “Complexity in itself is not good. Simplicity is the result of master’s work; complexity is the work of beginner’s work.” Tell me more about that. 

RB: It sounds harsh, but it’s really true. Complexity in itself is not an objective. The objective is to realize a story. You can design something to create one function in a complicated way, or in a simple way. When you use a simple way to build something, it works well. Mechanically, it’s clean. It’s clear. 

It’s like with text. If you’re writing an article about our watches, and you write it in a way that nobody understands it because it’s so complex— you’re talking about this and then you go back to that—it’s the same. People might read that and say, “What is she talking about? I don’t understand.” But if you write it in a simple way, it’s logic. It’s pure and precise. 

WW: This is your fifteenth year at Van Cleef & Arpels, and “Poetic Complications” is 20 years old now. What has it been like working on these types of projects? As an engineer, how do you translate such abstract ideas and feelings into something we can see and wear? We’re talking about love, longing, celestial movements, nature… They’re all mechanisms that serve a function, but tell a story on your wrist. 

RB: It’s all about the story—and we contribute to the story. Our stories are often universal love stories, looking into the stars and being amazed by the moon and changing the moon phase. Shooting stars, passing through the sky. I participate, as a human, in these type of stories because they are universal and they human. Nature? I love flowers and gardening. As a person, I can really participate in creating these stories with my colleagues. 

We talk about this and we have funny stories, too. The story with the flowers of the garden of Linné, indicating the time—that’s awesome. Once we have the story, we use technique, engineering, calculation, math, and simulations, but also craftsmanship and testing. We use all the craft required—drawings in the creative studio, choices of stones—and aspects we master in the maison. We put them together. This melting pot of knowledge helps us create the story. But at first, we are touched by the story. 

And then we embark on traveling to this destination. We know what we want to do, but we don’t know how to go there. It’s like traveling. Everybody says, “Let’s go this way or that way.” You have to decide together as a team. And we know we can do it.

Manmade Materials, Natural Stones

WW: What’s interesting, too, is the invention of materials. We see gemstones—like rubies, diamonds, and emeralds—that already exist from the earth, but the aventurine glass from Murano, for instance, used for the new Midnight Joueur Nuit Phase, is manmade. Can you tell us more about this material?

RB: This material is a very specific material. It corresponds perfectly to what we want to express with that story—the universe. You see the stars blinking, and when you turn it a bit in the light, it looks like we’re turning the light on and off, a little bit like the stars when you look into the sky. We thought this material perfectly adapted to what we want to do, but we only knew the material in blue. We wanted to have like a different color—black. 

To create it, it’s wasn’t easy, because it’s a material that’s very sensitive to the color. What we do is use glass, add some ingredients, and then you have, within that solution, a copper oxide, which infuses with the glass. Then, you have to cool it down in a certain way in order to create copper crystals, which have the right form, the right size, the right density, and the right quantity. That’s the problem! 

We did several trials to get it perfect. You can have a aventurine glass with a lot of copper in it, but it’s too much. It looks cheap, too glittery. Too much. We had too little, then too much. Sometimes we had crystals but they didn’t shine. In order to come up with the right process, it took us a while. Now, we’ve mastered the process, and we’re quite happy about it. The outcome is awesome. The dial is striking.  

WW: That specific watch has a lot of complexities, transforming cosmic movements to pair day and night with the animated moon phase. From a technical standpoint, what made this piece especially complex? 

RB: The fact that we integrated an automaton into this. To drive through the movement with two discs to create the moon phase is not that difficult. But everyone stops breathing when you say, “Let’s have this as an automaton.” The weight of the discs, the power required, the thicknesses… You integrate a whole new complexity of the automaton, and you want to keep the speed as a poetic speed. The centrifugal regulator has to be integrated.  It’s not just the driving mechanism, but also the speed regulating mechanism that suddenly searches for a spot to exist in a watch that is already densely crowded. That’s the problem. And then to have enough power to equalize the power, to be able to spin around the disk without stopping… And then to come up with the idea how not to de-phase the moon phase when you do it on animation. 

A Burgeoning Interest in Watches

WW: I’m curious to hear your thoughts on watches for the burgeoning customer and the younger generation. People are becoming more and more interested in watches in general, which is interesting. What about this excites you? 

RB: A watch is more than an element to give you the time. We now live in a world where time is everywhere. In the train, on the bus, on your fridge, on your cell phone. It’s not the the lack of information that drives somebody to wear a watch. A watch is more like a statement to yourself. It’s a pleasureful happening to put on a watch in the morning. You own a piece of jewelry, you own a piece of complex technique, if you like that. You owna little machine doing something for you, and you give it some energy. It’s existing because you bring it to life every morning. 

And if it’s an automatic watch, you bring it to life because you move your arm. But the energy is from you, so there’s a kind of symbiosis. The watch will not work if you don’t give it energy. It’s dependent on you, but also it’s enchanting you because it gives you the time through a story. 

Owning a watch is something special. I can understand people that say, “I don’t need a watch because I see time everywhere.” That’s fine. But I don’t wear a watch to see the time. I wear a watch because I love to wear one and because it’s a piece of jewelry. Even the watches we do, it’s jewelry that tells time. 

WW: What about the jewelry pieces that have hidden watches in them? Do you think those evoke different feelings for the wearer?

RB: That’s a step further because you don’t even see that it’s a watch—and you reveal the time and the watch. Our watches make you work a little bit. You have to either open a dial or push a pusher or count flowers. It forces you to slow down a bit, to appreciate time. The most precious thing we have is time, right? If the watch invites you to read the time, you may be more conscious about the time and the aspects of time while you read the time and while you have to work a little bit for it. It’s not consumable. It’s something precious and important. With a nice watch, you appreciate that more. 

WW: At lunch, you described why you wear a watch and how winding it in the morning is part of your daily ritual—that you feel like it’s winding you as much as you’re winding it. Can you share more details about that? What do you wear, why do you wear it, and what does it do for you?

RB: I’m wearing a Pierre Rappert 42 in rose gold. It’s a hand-wound watch. It became a ritual to to wind my watch in the morning. Some people do it in the afternoon, but I do it in the morning. This is a precious moment for me because it’s just a moment for me and my watch. It’s the same as like looking at your watch. Winding is also a positive act of giving energy to my watch. It feels like after I wind my watch, I wind myself, and I’m ready to go. It’s symbolic. It’s just a feeling, but I like that feeling and I appreciate that moment.

WW: Where do you see the next frontier of watchmaking and “Poetic Time” being? 

RB: For me, it’s not really a frontier. A frontier would be going from lone space into another—and this is more of a continuation. We’ve been doing watches since 1906, the first year of the maison. We’re not only been a high jeweler since the beginning, but a watchmaker, too. What we do today is really much in sync with our way of thinking about time; our way of interpreting time differently, and combining our knowledge of high jewelry, watchmaking, and jewelry making into one.

So, this is a continuation on a path, which is quite clear for us. We know what we want to do. We know what we don’t want to do. It’s very clear for us. But within that path, it’s quite large and it gives us many possibilities to tell the stories of tomorrow. 

What’s Next for Van Cleef & Arpels

WW: You mentioned working several years in advance on many different projects. What are you working on now, and for what in the future?

RB: If you ask me so directly, I have to answer you very directly. I can’t tell you! [Laughs] 

WW: Let me be a bit more broad. Are you working on any types of mechanisms that are in service of a story?

RB: Of course! [Laughs] This will continue. We will continue jewelry watches—a specific type of hour-and-minute indications, hidden in the watch within a piece of jewelry. We will continue to use all the craftsmanship that we know, like enamelling, engraving, sculping of gold, stone setting, stone selection. All this will stay intact and will be participating with us as engineers with the creative studio, contributing to drawings and new interpretations of things. We’ll keep working together to create the stories of tomorrow, to create the creations of tomorrow. 

We’re staying within the genes of the maison. This is the path we’re on—and the team is there, happily working together. Sometimes it takes a bit longer, which is okay, because we don’t make compromises. If we don’t like it, we keep doing it until it’s perfect. This will stay. 

The good news is that we will keep doing this, so the result will be shown every year and throughout different events. And with that, we’ll continue to enchant people who think, “This is cool. This is new. This is exciting. This is a new vision of storytelling, of innovation, of time.” 

The good news is that nothing changes, right? The bad news is that I can’t tell you exactly what it will be. 

WW: No news is good news, right?

RB: Exactly.