The brand looks to the future with their new campaign, spotlighting digital artistry in a bid to welcome new audiences.
The insistence of staying ‘relevant’ mounts on the shoulders of watch brands today, as much as turning over a profit. It’s not enough to stay afloat by simply ticking ROI and KPI boxes. It’s about engaging a new network of voices from generations beyond, which is what Swiss watchmaker’s Jaeger-LeCoultre have long set out to do.
How? By expanding the dialogue between watchmaking and the arts so that horological freshman, or those who know nothing more than that a watch ticks, to embrace this intricate world of craftsmanship. Conceiving the ‘Made of Makers’ programme, partnering with artists, designs and craftsmen from disciplines outside of watchmaking while sharing its core values, this year, Jaeger-LeCoultre casts the net wide to the future, collaborating with digital multi-disciplinary artist, Brendi Wedinger.
Enraptured by the natural world, Wedinger transforms pastoral tropes, taking inspiration from Jaeger-LeCoultre’s homeland, Vallée de Joux, immersed with wild flowers and the beauty of the valley. The result? A sequence of highly complex, one-of-kind flower sculptures, digitally rendered in the precious metals used at the Jaeger-LeCoultre atelier.
Based in Los Angeles, California, Wedinger explores the relationship between 3D digital arts, sculpture and floristry. From the outset, the collaboration might raise an eyebrow at the merge of a world so traditional and rooted in heritage, and the other a technique of the future. As such, it allowed the artist to learn about the nuances of the watch world, in a way that the collaboration hopes to achieve too.
“Going to the Jaeger-LeCoultre Maison allowed me to come face to face with all of these beautiful parts that make up a watch,” shares Wedinger. “It felt quite similar to how I think about flowers. There are so many flowers and each part has a different texture, a different colour. They’re all very unique. Thinking about how Jaeger-LeCoultre’s watches are, particularly the Reverso, I wanted to do something really innovative.”
Creating a love letter to nature, Wedinger marked a first in her career working with gold flowers for the first time. “It was exciting to ush that and capture light and shadow in different ways.” The result manifests in 3 delicate floral creations. “I built the sculptures first, which involves me hand-sculpting the piece and then later composing them in 3D, taking time to rend them in the gold material. I also did some animation of the flowers blooming, to add life to the pieces.”
Echoing botanical traditions, each flower has been gifted with a Latinate label, and in tribute to the Maison’s history. Paying tribute the Reverso’s year of Origin, the result sees the Flos Montis Fluit (Flower of the Mountain Flows) known as the 1931 Golden Poppy, the Gemma Vallis (The Jewel of the Vallee) known as the 1932 Golden Orchid and the third flower, the Rhapsodia Petalorum Alpinorum (The Rhapsody of Alpine Petals) known as the 1931 Golden Thistle.
The conclusion of this digitised bouquet demonstrates Jaeger-LeCoultre’s unquenchable thirst for innovation, in a bid to showcase watchmaking. Blurring the lines between reality and surrealism, Jaeger-LeCoultre commissioned a French plant breeder to select a flower that closely resembles the form of the 1931 Golden Orchid and to breed a hybrid exclusively for the Maison. Named the 1931 White Orchid, it is a natural and physical representation of Brendi Wedinger’s art piece.
“With Brendi, it was a very interesting encounter in terms of proximity to nature and a passion, of course, for creativity and modern expression,” shares Jaeger-LeCoultre’s CEO Catherine Rénier. “With Brendi, we very quickly realised we spoke the same design language, with respect and curiosity.” And it’s through the Made of Makers campaign that the Maison have learned to adjust their approach in reaching new consumers.
“The relationship between the owner and the timepiece has become a lot more emotional and symbolic in value. When we work with various artists and with Brendi in particular, we convey this emotion. We showcase not only, you know, who we are as a watchmaker through our products, but also the values that are important to us. What Jaeger-LeCoultre means in terms of, you know, value, creativity, as well as emotional message. Protecting craftsmanship is key. The development of modern artistic talents like Brendi, using new technologies is very important because technology is also part of what we do in our own process. All of this can be difficult to convey without being very technical or very watch savvy. We need to make sure that message can be heard, understood, or even felt a lot better.”
“Understanding the [composition] of the flowers truly links to the complexity of the Reverso, in the same way that you look at it and you have to study it for a bit, because you need to learn that you can actually turn over the face and look at both different sides of the watch,” shares the artist. “And I kind of think of it the same way as the way I approach flowers is you have to take a moment to look at it and study it.”
The onus on this collaboration is to firmly extend a hand to new audiences in the watch industry. “A watch is like a tiny little city, with artisans hunkered down with their long spectacles.” These artisans, both for Wedinger and Jaeger’s watchmakers might be creating tiny things, but their impact in the world of craftsmanship will, no doubt, be huge.
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s collaboration with Brendi Wedinger will become a part of the brands visual identity and seen in a variety of initiatives in the future, from activations in store and events from this November.
