When it comes to luxury heritage brands, few can boast the pedigree of artisanal watch maker Hublot and Parisian shoemakers Berluti. Famed for their opulent timepieces (a regular name drop familiar to any hip hop head), Hublot consistently push the art of watchmaking forward into new and thrilling territory. Berluti, meanwhile, are a French institution whose iconic footwear is always cut from their trademark Venezia leather and dyed in beautifully unconventional shades of extraordinary depth and richness
How fitting then, that the two brands decided to collaborate to celebrate Berluti’s 120th birthday last year. So, a Berluti leather strap on an Hublot watch, right? Wrong. They took things a little bit further than that and decided to make a whole watch out of the stuff. Well, okay, not the mechanics – because that’s impossible – but, very unusually, the dial itself. A process Ricardo Guadalupe, Hublot’s CEO, described as “one of the major difficulties” of the project because, “using a living material in a sealed case is very complicated.” It sure sounds it.
Luckily, Hublot and Berluti really came through on this one to create a piece they call The Classic Fusion. Available in both an all black edition – which boasts a strap inspired by the art of scarification – and a tobacco hued Scritto version (drawing on 18th century calligraphy), of which there were only 250 made, the watch beautifully rounds off Berluti’s comprehensive menswear offering. Antoine Arnault, CEO of Berluti, emphasised this, remarking, “after dressing the Berluti man from head to toe, we collaborated with Hublot to create the perfect watch to complete the silhouette.” We concur!