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From left: Pierre Landolt and Michel Parmigiani |
On 29th May 1996, Michel Parmigiani and Pierre Landolt
exchanged a highly symbolic handshake at the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne. It
marked the moment the Parmigiani Fleurier brand was created, witnessed by a
small gathering of journalists and friends.
The two men's emotions were running high, oscillating
between pride and expectation, and the vertigo such a great adventure inspires.
This handshake contained all the fervor of the heart over-ruling the head. Twenty years later we see the same men, the
same friendship and the same passion for watchmaking unchanged by the passing
of time.
A Few Milestones
Michel Parmigiani started his career in 1976 when he opened
a restoration workshop, despite the quartz watch crisis, which was in the process
of ravaging the traditional watchmaking industry, and against everyone's
advice. “When one has had the chance to work on as many wonders of the past as
I have done, he said, many years later, “it was simply impossible to believe
that traditional watchmaking would die out.”
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Fleur d'Orient (circa 1996) |
Michel Parmigiani developed a method of restoration that
became his work ethic. His watchmaking skills were constantly improved by the
lessons learnt from every piece he restored. He began to make a name for
himself amongst watch museums and collectors who sought out his talents. In the
1980s, he was entrusted with the care of the Maurice Yves Sandoz collection. It
was in this capacity that he met Pierre Landolt, president of the Sandoz Family
Foundation, whose admiration and confidence in him would sow the seeds for this
incredible watchmaking adventure. In 1996, Michel Parmigiani acquired the
production means and resources to create a brand that would bear his own name.
Parmigiani Fleurier turned its focus to creation, through a
watchmaking center able to manufacture and perfect all the components of a
watch, without ever losing the link to its origins. The brand still has an
active restoration workshop at its heart, enriching today's creations with
inspiration and expertise taken from the horological wonders created by our
fathers.
Over 20 years, Parmigiani Fleurier has developed a range of
products that reflects the strength of its manufacture and the talent of its
founder. No less than 33 original movements have been unveiled since this day
in 1996.
On May 29th 1996, the brand Parmigiani Fleurier is founded.
It is born from the trust woven between Michel Parmigiani and the Sandoz Family
Foundation who have acknowledged his talent as a watchmaker.
The early stages of Parmigiani Fleurier meet a strictly
artisanal approach. Michel Parmigiani makes the watchmaking components himself
and subsequently progresses in a network of craftsmen by giving them the simple
instruction to replicate his benchmark object. His standards of excellence and
finishing are so high that many providers push him back and the work partners
surrounding him become very exclusive in their quality. It’s a simple modus
operandi, efficient, without any middlemen, which is fitted with an artisanal
and limited production.
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The brand's first wristwatch, Ionica (circa 1999) |
In 1999, Parmigiani Fleurier’s first wristwatch is created,
the Kalpa Hebdomadaire (formerly the “Ionica”), and this piece changes the work
approach. With its iconic tonneau shape movement and eight-day power reserve, it
represents the brand’s first component miniaturization and creates therewith a
strong necessity in industrial partners. On the other hand, it implies a larger
production in terms of volume that supersedes the previous reign of the
benchmark component. An artisano-industrial logic is initiated.
Very soon, the decision to create a perfectly integrated
manufacture becomes obvious for various reasons. Firstly, to master the quality
of the components and put into practice Michel Parmigiani’s demanding standards
that are so difficult to obtain. Secondly, to ensure full control on planning
and not depend on suppliers that have little consideration for small component
enquirers. Finally, an integrated manufacture enables to break free from the
monopolistic control that large watch corporations apply on small craftsmen,
and hence build around oneself an exclusive network of knowhow.
Bringing together five entities that were assembled in less
than six years, Parmigiani Fleurier’s watchmaking hub is an extensive center of
know-how that enables to conceive, manufacture and perfect every single watch
component: from the smallest gear wheel to the entire escapement (which is the
doing of very few watch companies); from the minute details of the dial to the
case in its every shape.
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The Bugatti Super Sport (circa 2010) |
Presented in 2010, the Bugatti Super Sport illustrates the
state-of-the-art organization of this competence center. In record time, the
various entities initiated a dialogue aiming towards the production of this
motor-bloc on the wrist, measuring the constraints, suggesting the parries and
inventing solutions in concert to result in a creation resembling no other and
a world-first.
As the Parmigiani Fleurier collections bloom, the brand
pursues its work on singular and exceptional pieces. In 2011, Michel Parmigiani
presents the Hegirian Calendar, which relays the lunar cycles of the Muslim
calendar and accounts for the astounding complexity of their irregular
succession without the slightest manual correction. The knowledge of
watchmaking mechanisms and the curiosity to set out in the unknown remain at
the fundamentals of the watchmaking approach.
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The Tonda 1950 Tourbillon (circa 2014) |
In 2011, a brand reinforced by its learnings – by its
digressions sometimes as well as by its successes – presents the extra-flat
caliber. With a micro-rotor embedded in the depth of the movement (the key to
its slenderness), the Tonda 1950 line is a return to the fundamental
aesthetic codes of Michel Parmigiani, elegant, classic, sober. Its width of
2.6mm allows the movement to house many complication to come without
disturbing, or hardly, the profile’s slenderness. This is the case of the Tonda
1950 Tourbillon presented in 2014, the world’s flattest flying tourbillon.
In 2016, Parmigiani Fleurier presents the Tonda Chronor
Anniversaire, the first integrated chronograph, which is the Grail of an
accomplished manufacture and a summit of technical prowess. Today the brand
totals 33 movements manufactured within its watchmaking center. This is more accomplishment
in 20 years than certain brands reach in a century. Parmigiani Fleurier is not done
creating, surprising and glorifying watchmaking art.
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The new Tonda Chronor Anniversaire, made to celebrate 20 years of watchmaking. |
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