Jean-Charles de Castelbajac always works with music on. He sits at a large dining table in his Parisian home-slash-studio, enshrined by decades of his work plastered on the walls and in glass cabinets. It’s a strong rival to the Sir John Soane Museum, with dense libraries of objects scattered everywhere in sight. From photos with Mick Jagger pinned on the wall, to a custom Keith Haring, created for JCDC just days before the enamoured artist passed, it feels as though I’ve quite literally walked into his mind. Shades of primary colours occupy the furniture, and intricate scribbles on the windows deter the grey clouds away on this Parisian morning.

I meet JCDC at 10am, and after panting my way up five flights of stairs, the artist and fashion designer opened his doors to reveal a cornucopia of primary colours.Artefacts from his extensive collaborations from Palace Skateboards, Vetements, to Andy Warhol and Cindy Sherman and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He greets me with a JCDC branded glass of water and an espresso and I take a seat in a chair embroidered with his idiosyncratic punky-cartoon drawings. It feels impossible to find a patch on the towering walls that isn’t covered with a sketch, an image or relics from his career spanning more than five decades. A photo of himself, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood catches my eye in the corner of the room. Don’t choke on the Espresso in awestruck, I think.

JCDC deserves the title of collaborative sovereign, an early pioneer of partnering with others well before today’s era of constant buddying-up. But it’s his latest collaboration that silences the din of surplus coalitions that saturate the market today. And his latest offering is a momentous one, partnering with Max Büsser’s M.A.D label, an off-shoot from his hallmark MB&F, striving to make high-end watches more affordable.
Catching up with the multi-hyphenate artist, discover JCDC’s poetic relationship with time, adapting to a new canvas and the why it’s time to truly love.

Scarlett Baker: You’re a man of many collaborations. Why this one?

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac: It’s experimental. My time is going faster than when I was an 18-year-old boy. Everything is digital and moving quickly. When you put something out there in the world today as an artist, time moves on immediately after and you’re onto the next thing. This project allowed me to play with time, particularly when it’s a discipline where you have less possibility. It felt like a confrontation, and my duty was to stretch time with my poetry and creativity, which I have created through the wings that rotate on the dial.

SB: It’s not your first rodeo when it comes to all things watches either. You’ve ticked off Seiko and Swatch. It seems to be a recurring object in your life, intentionally or otherwise. Have you always cared for these objects?

JCDC: My first watch was given to me by my father. It was an Omega watch. I remember not long after moving to Paris, I found out about a private philosophical society called La Phalène. I got invited to one of their meetings in a school yard under a shelter that protects you from the rain. There were 12 seats [He gets out a chalk and starts drawing the formation on a sheet of paper]. We each went round one by one. They were brilliant men all saying brilliant things; I remember one man made a comparison between Shakespeare and a philosopher, arguing that they were from the same year, even though they weren’t. I realised it was soon to be my turn and so when it came to me, I stood up and walked to the chair in the middle of the circle. I took off my father’s watch, grabbed a rock, and smashed it on the watch and said “Time is Dead.” I got into La Phalène but I never went back. I just wanted to be accepted.

SB: Were you familiar with Max and his work before he DM me on Instagram? But

JCDC: Of course. Max is an artist. I’ve always noticed his work. I love his structure and academic approach. He’s an experimentalist. He took the wings of his own destiny to create a brand that embraces that spirit and you can feel that in his work. There’s always this idea of motion, just like me. That’s why I love this watch. It’s a reminder that creativity never stops.

SB: What prompted you to pen ‘Time is Love’ on the strap of the watch?

JCDC: It’s a reminder to appreciate, not to be appreciated. It reflects my mood everyday. Every morning I wake up and appreciate the day.

SB: How did it feel working with a watch as your canvas?

JCDC: Typically I work with a rectangle. That’s why I love my Cartier Tank. Life is like a rectangle, it’s the shape of a bed. It’s a blanket, it’s a flag. It’s a structure that we are raised inside, and you’ll notice it a lot in my work.

SB: Was it a challenge to work with a circular watch then?

JCDC: It’s a symbol of the universe. And that’s why I used the motif of wings. It’s a reminder that we’re eternally moving and that life is full of joy and mystery. It also reminds me of original vinyls, when I used to listen to Led Zeppelin.

SB: Have you ever regretted anything that you’ve made?

JCDC: Only in that I might not have had enough consideration for the material. My father had a very old school way of thinking. He sent me to a military boarding school and believed that material goods were about money. For me, I wanted to reject that through my work and rebel.
SB: What does a watch mean to you?

JCDC: They’re not just a symbol of wealth or luxury. If you decompose them for what they are, they represent the essence of time.

SB: And what is the essence?

JCDC: It’s a story. Time has become a crystallisation of image, a representation. But those images are
the ghost of the original object. When it comes to a watch, some people don’t even know how to tell the time, but it’s about what they carry. When you buy a painting, are you buying it because it’s beautiful, or because it’s asking a question? They might not understand it, but it will go into their soul and ask a deeper question. My mission is to give back more meaning and authenticity to objects.

SB: If this watch were a song, what would it be?

JCDC: Multicolorjam 2 by Julien Granel.

SB: Looking at your work across these walls, you’ve got images of your recent collaboration with Vetements creating teddy bear coats, much like you did with Lady Gaga and Drake. Does the emotion differ in those pieces to the rest of your work, and more specifically, to this watch?

JCDC: I never had a teddy bear when I was a child, so those pieces are a link to my childhood. But the primary colours you see consistently throughout my work represent colour merging into one, like the wings on the watch when they spin. Colour represents race, religion, identity and it’s about how we live together in harmony.

The raffle to purchase the watch opens today, April 3rd and will remain open for 2 weeks, until April 17th limited to 999 pieces.