Van Cleef & Arpels expands on its Poetry of Time
The Maison continues its dance with time with a refresh of the Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée at Watches & Wonders 2022.
For Van Cleef & Arpels, its love affair with dance began as early as its inception in 1896 where the founding family were known to be arts patrons. In the 1920s, ballet enthusiast Louis Arpels and his nephew Claude indulged in frequent visits to Opéra Garnier, a stone’s throw from their Place Vendôme boutique.
This eventually led to the debut of the Maison’s now-signature ballerina clips in early 1940s, inspired by 18th century dancer La Camargo and the famous Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova. The slender silhouettes of these mythical personalities were captured in infinite postures, donning costumes and headdresses studded in precious stones, while a diamond represented their face.
Then in the 1950s, Claude Arpels befriended New York City Ballet co-founder and choreographer George Balanchine. Their mutual interest in gems cemented an artistic bond, resulting in the production of Balanchine’s ballet Jewels, first performed in New York in April 1967.
“Dance has been a significant field for the Maison throughout its history, with examples that include the encounter between Claude Arpels and George Balanchine in the 1950s, the partnership with Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project, collaborations with various companies and operas across the world and the FEDORA – Van Cleef & Arpels Prize for Ballet. In 2020, we wished to take things a step further by uniting our activities in this domain. With the program Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, the Maison aims to support modern and contemporary dance, and encourage new choreography,” says Van Cleef & Arpels President Nicolas Bos.
In the same spirit, the Maison—whose heritage of jewellery designs have long been inspired by the art of ballet—has also endowed its watchmaking creations with the feminine figures of ballerinas and fairies amidst scenography emanating poetry, grace and delicate beauty.
The Lady Arpels Ballerines Musicales released more than a year ago from the Maison’s Poetic Complications collection reflects the full wonder of ballet, particularly as it boasts the three-dimensional tableau of an actual theatre stage. Each of the three watches, featuring a unique fusion of stones and motifs, allude to the three movements of the Balanchine-created ballet, Jewels.
On another note, the Extraordinary Dials pair of Lady Danse and Lady Danse Duo is a nod to Broadway productions of the 1950s and 1960s, portraying respectively a soloist going on stage and a group of dancers against a backdrop of precious and ornamental stones.
After a brief hiatus during the pandemic, Van Cleef & Arpels spectacularly powered its way back to the recently concluded 2022 Watches & Wonders fair in Geneva. Breathing new life into its watchmaking—underscored by emblematic sources of inspiration from enchanting nature to the heavenly cosmos and the art of dance—the Maison has triumphantly refreshed its inventive brand of high watchmaking. Infused with dream, emotion and fantasy, its Poetry of Time creations draw us anew into a world filled with wonder, imagination and harmony.
Among the Maison’s 2022 novelties, the Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée combines the Maison’s watchmaking expertise and jewellery savoir faire . It is a reprise of the 2013 Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée watch, which was awarded with the Lady’s Complication Prize at the Grand Prix de L’Horlogerie de Genève in the same year.
A quote from Anna Pavlova: “I dreamed that I was a ballerina, and that I spent my life dancing as light as a butterfly...” was the inspiration behind the 2013 Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée watch.
This year, the Maison reinterprets it in two new iterations: white and rose gold. Now revisited with a slender and dynamic attitude, the dancer’s refined silhouettes showcase her tutu layers unfurling in new materials and colours. The ballerina’s body is sculpted in relief in gold while her headdress, face, bust and waist are embellished in diamonds as she strikes a pose with her arms gracefully stretched out above the veils of her tutu that have been superimposed with a transparent effect.
For the Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée watch, the dancer is dressed in a first fixed corolla decorated in champlevé enamel, sapphires and diamonds, and in plique-à-jour enamel for the Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée Rose Gold watch. A pair of translucent wings represents the second set of veils adorning the plique-à-jour enamel forms, set against a backdrop of lustrous guilloché motif— heightening the impression of movement—to which a few layers of translucent violet or pink enamel are applied for more depth and brilliance.
These two Poetic Complications also mirror the heritage of Van Cleef & Arpels in the form of their double retrograde mechanism borrowed from the Maison’s Chinese Magician pocket watch of 1927. On demand, the figure raises its arms to indicate the hours and minutes, and this time-on-demand movement with a retrograde display is a House signature flaunting its poetic vision of time—the dancer’s hands trace a half-circle before returning to their initial position, ready to begin a new cycle.
All one has to do is to press the button at 8 o’clock for this to spring into action where the petticoat pointing to the hours lifts first before the other on the minute scale moves. The wings stand still for a few seconds to indicate the time before returning simultaneously to their starting points.
The Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée and Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée Rose Gold watches encapsulate the Maison’s watchmaking virtuosity where the convergence of its different craft skills work in unity to conquer the technical feat of evoking the fluid movement, lightness and refinement of the part dancer, part butterfly feminine figure.
