How Sylvain Berneron Created the Most Audacious Watch of the Year
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Earlier this month, at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie in Geneva, a.k.a. the Oscars of watchmaking, Sylvain Berneron stood on stage at the Théatre du Léman before a crowd of some 1,400 people and accepted the Audacity Prize for his Mirage timepiece, a sublime example of shaped watchmaking that he spent nearly $900,000 of his own money to develop.
In his acceptance speech, Berneron, an industrial designer who’d worked at Breitling for five years before pursuing his own endeavor, remarked on the perseverance the project required and the risks he took to bring the Mirage to market.
“There is a real form of self-endangerment which is the foundation of artistic art,” he said. “I would also like to thank my team with whom I work. I was able to start by surrounding myself with their courage.”
On the morning after the awards, I met Berneron and his wife, Marie-Alix, for breakfast at the Beau Rivage hotel on Geneva’s lakefront, where he told me about the journey to making the original 38 mm Mirage as well as the smaller 34 mm stone-dial version he introduced at Geneva Watch Days in late August. He kicked off the conversation with a potent anecdote about how, in the earliest stage of his work on the Mirage, a supplier who also happened to be a friend tried to talk him out of making the timepiece, implying that carrying on with his plan would be akin to professional suicide. That Berneron defied the warning and instead committed himself entirely to the project seems like the very essence of audacity. Below, he talks about why he thinks making art requires some “personal endangerment,” how the Mirage is like “an offering to God,” and what collectors and fans of his work can look forward to seeing from Berneron in 2025.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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Why was this friend so convinced that pursuing your vision for the Mirage would be professional suicide?
I was 33 years old, and I’d recently been named chief product officer at Breitling, which is in itself a great accomplishment.
So you were successful already.
And that was his thinking. He was like, “Look, you have a great job. Hundreds of people would die to be in your position. Why would you risk it? Especially to do what you’re doing.” Because making asymmetrical movements—they hate it in the industry because it’s the most expensive thing. This first movement cost 800,000 Swiss francs to develop—not to produce, just to develop. You have the technical plans, the tooling, and then you have to pay for the production.
The problem with that is it’s a huge investment. And from a financial perspective, you want to protect the investment. So usually, you make round movements so that if it doesn’t sell in this design, you make another design. In my case, the movement is completely married with the case. And on top of that, I did it in full gold. And that was the provocation. For me, from an artistic perspective, it is very interesting because it’s the personal endangerment that I tried to evoke yesterday. The artistic endeavor is meaningful when you really lean into the danger zone, in my opinion.
And remind me again why it was important to have a gold movement, gold spring bars, etc.?
It’s, again, the full commitment. In this project, there is an “offering to God” sort of mentality. And the goal is to do to the best of our ability, no matter what. So these gold spring bars, for example, are a typical example of the mentality because nobody will see them. The client doesn’t see them. It’s a pain for the supplier, and it’s bad for the finances of the company. So nobody wins. To me, it’s also a mindset of: No matter what happens, I know I did my absolute best, and there are no regrets.
Is delivering watches and fulfilling orders your biggest challenge now?
So far, yes. I’ve hired a head of business and administration who’s going to join us in January next year because I can’t. I’ve been working seven days a week effectively for the past three years. I need to rebalance.
How many people are on your team?
Currently, we are a company of five people, including myself. So it’s very little, especially considering the level of emails and demands and DMs that we have to deal with. The brand, it’s becoming its own monster.
I like to think that Berneron brings a new audience into watchmaking. We have singers, musicians, art directors, fashion people, people that would otherwise not really care about watches. And it is really about this unconventional look.
How have people learned about Berneron?
You mean, where was the inflection point? I think it was two years ago. I had two very interesting meetings with [collector] Roni Madhvani in London. We met for lunch. I had a dummy of the watch, where even the dial was in paper. At the end of this lunch, he was like, “Can I have an invoice and can I pay a deposit?” I basically opened the company two years ago with an invoice to Roni. This is how it started. Then Laurent Picciotto, an esteemed French collector—we spoke on the phone very often. [The collector] Auro Montanari has also played a crucial role. So some of the big names. We delivered Auro’s piece in this very room for lunch.
A lot of the talk this week in Geneva has centered on the slowdown in the Swiss watch market. As an independent with plenty of orders, do you feel that anxiety?
We have six years of orders for the big watch, and three years of orders for the small one. And when I say three years of orders, these orders have been 50 percent paid, it’s not just some idea. It is for me a way to bring financial safety to the company. It’s also a way for me to implicate the collector into this risky mentality. I find it very interesting to tell these guys, “Look, if you want something, you also have to commit.”
So is the plan now to go back to Neuchatel and focus on production?
Basically, I’m following the production of the original Mirage. I’m going to deliver another 24 pieces right before Christmas this year. So that’s the forecast before the end of the year. The next big PR step for us will be September next year for the launch of the second collection, an annual calendar, which will be another corner for us because this is where it goes back to round. Now we are really parked in the exotic corner. And I’m trying to say, “Look, we can also express ourselves in a more traditional territory.”
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