one of the youngest but most coveted Swiss watch brands to emerge in recent years proposes an exciting and innovative way to read time in the form of its new and dynamic HLQ Quantième collection of watches.
Representing the brand’s first foray into circular watch designs the HLQ wins you over with its rivetting good looks contributed by a massive 44 mm wide case boasting a black opaline dial with hand-applied ‘HAUTLENCE’ lettering, intermediate dial with laser cutting minute figures and a smart hand sewn alligator strap. It is offered in five variations and is available in both stainless steel and 18k either white or rose gold and comes in a limited edition of just 88 pieces per model, with each watch individually identified with plate numbers.
The HLQ’s lugs use special pivoting screws for extra wearing comfort. And inside its handsome case contains the manually wound HAUTLENCE HLQ movement named for the watch which has a 40 hour power reserve and water tightness of 3 atm. Its crystal clear transparent case of 10.65mm thickness allows a detailed skeletonised view of the watch’s gears and mechanics such as the jumping hours, retrograde minutes and jumping date. Clinching together fine artistry, technical precision and architectural perfection, the HLQ is designed to immediately engage your eyes and mind in a sublime dialogue on Time’s mechanical poetry.
Launched just four years ago in 2004, HAUTLENCE has been hailed for sparking off a new era in the development of the watch industry by presenting watches with innovative and original faces and dials. The brand’s name ‘HAUTLENCE’ was coined as an anagram of the legendary watch-making city Neuchatel, location of its Swiss headquarters. Likewise, the Mobius band in its logo is a symbol of the firm’s commitment to the engineering challenges and ingenuity that are a hallmark of its product line. This watch enterprise ‘ticked off’ when three friends coming from various activities in the world of watches met: Renaud de Retz from marketing, Guillaume Tetu in project development, and François Quentin in design who took up the challenge of launching a watch brand that would tell time in a totally new way.
The signature element of all HAUTLENCE watches is its unique in-house manual winding movement featuring retrograde minutes combined with jumping hours. The jumping hour is characterized by the use of a decorated jumping disc with an aperture in which the hour numeral, inscribed on a fixed dial, is visible. And the minutes are intricately connected to the jumping hours via a connecting rod system. Both are in turn controlled by the HL patent combining translation slide as a result of declining probe snail with a mass of gold acting as flywheel and to provide the energy necessary to jump drive. This construction has often been likened by connoisseurs to the movement of an ancient locomotive.
The HAUTLENCE HLQ collection is available at Damas Jewellery, Emirates Towers, Dubai; Al Sayegh Jewellery, Abu Dhabi and Al Majed Jewellery, Doha, Qatar. Further details can be obtained by calling HAUTLENCE Middle East office at +9714 299 6500.
