… like the first time I saw the Les Cabinotiers collection; my love-at-first-sight initial encounter with an Overseas timepiece; their extraordinary variations of métiers d’art; the inexplicable way the brand has of being venerable and avant-garde at the same time.

We were honoured to include Vacheron Constantin in our Lifetime ManufacTOUR this year, as the Maison turns 270 years old. A long – very long – and uninterrupted history; an imposing age that somehow finds the brand even more energised and dynamic, ready to pioneer new achievements and, again, to launch numerous firsts, as befits a name that has always been very innovative, very original and yet very classical, in the sense that their watches will never feel dated.

And I have the proof. As a very early birthday present (at least this is how I viewed it), I was gifted one hour with the incredible Head of Heritage at Vacheron Constantin, who regaled us with pieces and stories that are generally confined to the legendary archives of the Maison. I had the privilege of seeing official and personal papers from the 18th and 19th centuries, some of them dating back to many years before the Maison was even dreamed of: birth certificates, personal correspondence from the true globetrotters that were the founders of the Maison, legal papers and so on. I also took a trip down to the roots of the manufacture, into the depths of the archive rooms, where I saw the huge ledgers holding the entire history of the phenomenon that is Vacheron Constantin. And, last but not least, some of the Vacheron timepieces that made history were there before my very eyes, selected by the Head of Heritage, to whom I am forever grateful. These are the watches that you will see in the special dossier that we have compiled for your pleasure, hoping that as many people as possible will have the joy of seeing at least some of these pieces ‘in the flesh’. In my opinion, they deserve to be seen and admired all over the world.

Besides these golden moments, I was happy to revisit the Atelier Metiers d’Art, where the very rare, sometimes unique pieces are dreamed up and then created by the artisans that are truly the great artists of our times. I do feel that at least part of the Renaissance still lives through these talented masters of guillochage, engraving, enamelling and gem setting, who never say no to even the wildest challenges, whether one-of-a-kind pieces requested by clients or highly innovative projects born at the manufacture in Plan-les-Ouates. I was sworn to secrecy, but the work of engraving that I saw there during our ManufacTOUR is a true masterpiece of modern times – linking, in the familiar spirit of the brand, the golden age of beauty centuries ago to the modern era.

We then moved on to the workshop that undertakes to service and repair every Vacheron Constantin timepiece ever made. Some of them, as you can imagine, are very, very, very old, so much so that tools and parts must be re-created for them. Here, just as throughout the building, is a place where you see how extraordinarily beautiful it all is when the past and the present co-exist and work together. For Vacheron Constantin, its 270 years of existence do not for one minute signify the burden of old age, but a treasure trove of human history, experience, agony and ecstasy, creation and genius. As a wise man once said: ‘What has been will be again.’ Beauty never perishes.