Jaeger-LeCoultre is just nine years shy of its 200th birthday, and in that time, the Swiss watchmaker has accumulated over 430 patents and 1,400 calibres to its name. It’s one of the very few watchmakers in the world that has the capability of producing all of its timepieces in their entirety—from concept and design to production and assembly—all thanks to the 180 different skills that Jaeger-LeCoultre has brought together under its roof at the Vallée de Joux.
It’s not for nought that the prestigious brand is known as the watchmaker’s watchmaker, given that they used to provide movements to other notable watch brands. But with its Made of Makers programme, Jaeger-LeCoultre shows that it’s not just horology that the Manufacture has impacted with its wide-reaching influence, but also the next generation of creatives who share the same vision, passion, and drive in all they do—be it audio, visual, food or even scents.
Watch brands have been known to look outside the harrowed walls of horology for synergising collaborations and partnerships. Made for Makers, however, goes one step further: It provides a platform that facilitates an ongoing dialogue between various artistic disciplines through regular introductions of upcoming artists, designers and craftsmen. The one thing that these creatives have in common is a shared vision of creativity, expertise, precision and eco-mindfulness—values that are similarly and fiercely championed by Jaeger-LeCoultre.
Since its launch in 2022, the Made of Makers community has embraced individuals from contemporary art, music, gastronomy and perfumes. The alumni include names like sound and installation artist Zimoun (Switzerland), perceptual artist Michael Murphy (USA), visual artist Guillaume Marmin (France), mixologist Matthias Giroud (France), and digital media artist Yiyun Kang (Korea). Essentially, creative innovators whose works push boundaries to explore unexpected mediums and materials in order to form an original point of view—while remaining respectful to the heritage that came before.
Jaeger-LeCoultre shows the wonders that can come when an eminent brand places its weight behind a cause. A myriad of new works have been commissioned through the programme to animate the exhibitions that Jaeger-LeCoultre stages across the globe. In doing so, the Maison has provided these upcoming visionaries with a platform, a springboard, on which to showcase their revolutionary work. As the brand believes, the creators of today are the shapers of tomorrow. And Made of Makers is there to foster this pivotal community every step of the way.
ALEX TROCHUT
Lettering Artist, Spain/USA
New York-based Spanish typographer, illustrator and artist Alex Trochut has built a reputation for his experimental approach to typography. He draws inspiration from a wide range of sources—from pop and street culture to fashion and music—while focusing on the representation of language as a visual medium that presents text and imagery as a united expression. His much-accoladed work resonates with people emotionally, leading to an impressive star-studded portfolio that includes clients the likes of Artic Monkeys, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Arcade Fire, and Bruno Mars.
For his collaboration with Jaeger-LeCoultre in 2022, Trochut created the 1931 Alphabet, a bold new typeface that pays tribute to the Manufacture’s rich history and values. The typeface is rooted in the Art Deco style—an art period that is not only still visibly evident in the architecture of Trochut’s adopted home of New York, but one that saw the birth of the Maison’s emblematic Reverso timepiece. The letters convey a sense of movement through strong, geometric lines and visual depth. “As I started creating the designs, a concept emerged that would unify Art Deco and Jaeger-LeCoultre’s craft of watchmaking. The letters evoked some sort of mechanism, full of different modular parts that work together to create a whole,” Trochut shares. “While I consider watchmaking to be another level of complexity, both disciplines embody a devotion to the little things, which need to work in harmony inside a system.”
BRENDI WEDINGER
Digital Floristry Sculptor, USA
Brendi Wedinger’s world is one that transverses dichotomies. Channelling her love for nature into three-dimensional digital works, her art invites you into a virtual world where the abstract meets realism and real life with fantasy. Even the creation of her digital pieces is conceived in the same way: She first uses traditional technical tools to hand-sculpt elements of her composition before turning to digital tools to complete the picture. As she reveals: “What drew me to the digital medium is that it gives me more tools to play with and a wider scope for experimentation, so that my work becomes a more expressive homage to nature rather than a literal representation of it.”
In 2023, the Los Angeles multi-disciplinary native created a series of three surrealistic flowers (a particular love of hers) for Jaeger-LeCoultre. Looking to the native flora found at the brand’s home at the Vallée de Joux, Wedinger’s blooms are a hybrid species that combines elements of various real flowers to form a new, imaginative and hyper-realistic whole. The flowers were then rendered in gold as a nod to the precious metal that Jaeger-LeCoultre uses for its timepieces.
As Wedinger shares about her visit to the Manufacture, “Aside from the natural beauty of the valley, I felt very inspired by the high-complication watches and the unique details you find in them. I wanted the flowers to be complex and one-of-a kind, like the watches, with all of the beauty and immense detail that can be found in both.”
ROY WANG
Street Light-painter, China
As any photographer knows, there are three main principles when it comes to light: Its intensity, its direction, and its quality. Roy Wang pushes the understanding of these three principles right to the edge with works that use light as the medium that carves a subject out of darkness. Working at night, Wang draws with a moving light and captures the process on camera with a single, long exposure that usually takes just one minute.
“I describe my art as the pursuit of the unknown because I must work towards an imagined result—I can’t see what I’m making until after it has been captured by the camera,” says the Beijing artist. “The process is very fast; it takes only a minute or two, but the planning is very lengthy. I must envision the image, the exact gestures that I will make to ‘paint’ it, the invisible ‘frame’ that must contain those gestures, and the perfect positioning of my body and the light source in relation to the frame and camera.”
A quick look at his oeuvre (which ranges from whimsical caricatures to fantastical mythological creatures set in urbane locations) shows the master craftsman-level of precision and control he has over his métier. In addition to needing good spatial memory and imagination, the photos he creates also require deep muscle memory—something that he attributes to his years as a professional sportsman. (Upon leaving university in 2009, he made his way to Japan to play rugby.) But it seems he has no regrets leaving the pitch for his art. “Part of the magic of light-painting is that the light effects vanish as soon as they are created, yet they live forever through the photographs.”
As part of this year’s Made of Maker programme, Wang created a series of works that saw him pushing his craft beyond its usual set of challenges. Not least because the task required him to scale his usual life-sized work down to the dimensions of a watch. To achieve this, he had to create a new set of miniaturised light tools and develop an entirely different set of gestures: Big, sweeping body movements were replaced with precise and practised hand and wrist motions that took months to perfect. The results were three experimental photographs and a stop-motion film, entitled The Dragon of Time, that employed his love for form, colour and dynamic lines while showcasing his Chinese heritage.
Wang’s works are the result of a meeting of worlds—Light with dark, the East and the West, movements with stillness-which adds an exciting and original vision to the Made of Makers programme; one that allows it to explore the domain where precision, creativity and passion overlap.
TØKIO M¥ERS
Musical Alchemist, UK
Tøkio M¥ers is a man who defies categorisation. Born in London, and of Jamaican heritage, the pianist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer fuses classical with hip-hop, dance, soul, and many other genres, to bring to life a completely new sound that excites and invigorates. His performances, which are all designed and produced by him, have also been known to be emotive and visually spectacular.
“Music has never been static; it’s in constant evolution,” M¥ers says. “For me, it starts with mastery of the basics, then breaking free from the norms and composing my own story—constantly searching for the balance between the voices of the past and my own.” It is in this aspect that Jaeger-LeCoultre and he are kindred spirits. Using his mastery over foundational music as a platform on which to launch into new, innovative directions is a principle that the Manufacture similarly applies to its own horological creations. As M¥ers shares: “Composing for Jaeger-LeCoultre was so natural for me because we’re looking for the same thing; there’s a common goal: To reinvent the classic and find what is universal and timeless.”
It’s small wonder, then, that Jaeger-LeCoultre turned to him to compose the soundtrack of its Golden Ratio Musical Show, an immersive 10min sound-and-light production, that was projected onto a giant screen of falling water across four days at the watchmaker’s 1931 Cinema in Los Angeles last year. Exploring the different facets of the golden ratio principle—its presence in nature; the scientific examination of its mystical properties; its impact on architecture and contemporary design (not least Jaeger-LeCoultre’s emblematic Reverso)—the movie is accompanied by an emotional score that M¥ers composed as “a short symphony in four chapters, or movements, that takes the listener on a powerful journey”.
As with all artists and creators who have been inducted into the Made of Makers programme, M¥ers visited the Jaeger-LeCoultre Manufacture in the Vallée de Joux to fully immerse himself in the environment in which the brand’s esteemed watches are made—from the the natural beauty of the surrounding landscape to interacting with the Maison’s watchmakers and artisans.
“Being in Le Sentier, seeing first-hand how Jaeger-LeCoultre operates, experiencing the atmosphere in the Manufacture, seeing all the skills, hearing all of the different sounds, enjoying the calm surroundings of the Vallée de Joux—that gave me a lot of inspiration to draw on,” he says. “And the Golden Ratio theme gave me the idea of translating that mathematical formula of 1.618 [Phi] into a tempo of 161.8 beats per minute.”
HIMANSHU SAINI
Chef, India
There’s a reason why chef Himanshu Saini is often referred to as an Ingredient Scientist. Armed with a mission to change how Indian cuisine is perceived, the acclaimed chef melds the chemistry of ingredients with the physics of cooking to create a gastronomy experience unlike any other. His visionary approach to his craft is what led his flagship restaurant in Dubai, Trèsind Studio, to being awarded two Michelin stars.
For his collaboration with Jaeger-LeCoultre this year, Saini created the Precision Atelier, which debuted within the watchmaker's booth at Watches and Wonders Geneva in April, before it made its way around the world as a part of the brand’s Precision Maker exhibition. The menu comprised four experiential bite-sized morsels, created exclusively for the project, that brought guests on a culinary journey of visual artistry and flavours arising from ingredients from both India and the Vallée de Joux.
“I have always felt a strong connection with hand craftsmanship,” says Saini. “Whether drawing out the fine details of flavour profiles or sculpting the presentation of a dish, my foundation lies in the tactile connection with the ingredients. That connection immediately struck me when I visited the Jaeger-LeCoultre Manufacture and, for the first time, saw watchmakers at work. Through the intricacy and precision of craftsmanship, we share a deep affinity that I aim to express in my creations for the Precision Atelier.”
NINA MÉTAYER
Pastry Chef, France
“Harmony in everything is, and has always been, a blend of mathematics and poetry. It’s a balance to which nature has long held the secrets—and a deep belief that Jaeger-LeCoultre and I share and apply to our work,” says celebrated pastry chef Nina Métayer. She first collaborated with the Maison in 2021, creating an Art Deco-inspired menu of pastries for the launch of its 1931 Café. Two years later and Métayer returns to the fold once again as a bonafide member of the Maison’s Made of Makers programme.
Famed for pastries that surprise with its evocative blend of unexpected flavours and visual appeal, Métayer was not only named Pastry Chef of the Year twice by different publications before she turned 30, she is also the International Union of Bakers and Pastry Chefs’ first-ever female awardee. For her latest partnership with Jaeger-LeCoultre, the pastry chef dreamt up four new delicacies centred around the golden ratio—in homage to the brand’s original 1931 Reverso and its divine proportions.
The creations, infused with ingredients from the Vallée de Joux, showcase Métayer’s exceptional talent, invigorating vision and precise skills—values that have led critics to call her a breath of fresh air in French pastry. As Métayer explains, “The creative spirit also understands that aesthetics has an impact on what we feel—so the visual forms of my pastries influence the perception of flavour: It’s the promise of unleashing poetry from the first bite.”
NICOLAS BONNEVILLE
Artist, France
Rare essences and natural ingredients melded by a marriage of time-honoured traditional and avant-garde techniques. This is what one can expect from the distinct fragrances dreamt up by Nicolas Bonneville, who found his life’s calling upon a trip to Grasse, the world’s perfume capital, at the tender age of 12. (His passion saw him embarking on a journey in which he taught himself how to blend through experiments he designed at home.)
Since then, he has been mentored by the legendary Jacques Maurel and Francis Kurkdjian, travelled the globe in search of rare, natural ingredients, and, for his troubles, came up tops in the Fragrance Foundation France’s Niche category for one of his recent creations this year. He has creativity, imagination, innovation and daring in spades—all of which have undoubtedly led to his reputation as one of the most talented “noses” of his generation.
“In perfumery, just as in painting, maintaining the purity of blends is essential,” Bonneville explains. “Similarly, when creating perfumes, it’s crucial to dose raw materials carefully to preserve their unique olfactory character without excessive dilution. The principle of “less is more” ensures that your fragrance retains its clarity and depth; you achieve a unique scent with real character and distinction.”
The emotive nature of scents draws parallels with that of timepieces. They are both expressions of self that signify one’s essence of being without the need for words, and they bear an uncanny ability to evoke memories, nostalgia and emotions. There’s also the fact that both métiers call for utmost precision in their strife for artistry and innovation within the hall of time-revered traditions and techniques. Bonneville’s trio of scents created for Made of Makers this year subscribe to this philosophy to the letter: They are a new olfactory signature that speaks of the Maison’s exceptional identity.
Three factors characterise the fragrances: They have short formulas for a clean and sophisticated profile; they bear noble ingredients gathered from different continents and extracted with the highest regard to the preservation of their properties; and they boast high concentrations of one key ingredient for a distinct personality.
“Like watchmaking, the art of perfumery stands at the intersection of creativity, science and precision, and we are delighted to welcome Nicolas Bonneville to our Made of Makers programme,” says Matthieu Le Voyer, Chief Marketing Officer of Jaeger-LeCoultre. “With his self-taught talent and artistic vision, Nicolas Bonneville brings an exciting new dimension to the programme, which celebrates the convergence of craftsmanship across many disciplines and cultures.”