Chanel makes watches because it can afford to. That is the whole foundation. The fashion house prints money with handbags and perfume, and some of that money funds a Swiss watch manufacture that has never needed to turn a profit on its own. Keep that in mind for everything below. It explains a lot.
Coco and the Wertheimers
Coco Chanel, circa 1920. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel opened a hat shop in Paris in 1910 and spent the next sixty years becoming the most famous designer in the world. The little black dress. The tweed suit. No. 5. In 1924 she partnered with Pierre Wertheimer to manufacture the perfume, giving him seventy percent of the business. She spent decades trying to claw it back and reportedly called him “the bandit who screwed me.” He kept the seventy percent.
The Wertheimers still own Chanel. Alain and Gérard Wertheimer, the grandsons, run one of the largest privately held luxury companies on earth. Coco died in 1971. Karl Lagerfeld took over in 1983 and ran the creative side until 2019. The family writes the checks and stays out of the way. That arrangement is why the watch division exists in its current form. Nobody has to justify it on a spreadsheet.
The watch project
The Vendome Column in Paris. Its octagonal shape inspired the Premiere. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Premiere launched in 1987, an octagonal women’s watch designed by Jacques Helleu, Chanel’s longtime artistic director. The shape came from the Place Vendome and the No. 5 bottle stopper. Then in 1993, Chanel bought G&F Châtelain, a La Chaux-de-Fonds case and bracelet manufacturer. A fashion house buying a Swiss factory within six years of its first watch. Nobody else in fashion was doing this. Nobody else in fashion had handbag money.
The J12 came in 2000 after seven years of development. Black ceramic sports watch, unisex, genuinely new-looking. White ceramic in 2003, which started a trend that ate the entire industry for a decade. Credit where it is due: the J12 was a real design achievement and the watch world took it seriously, which almost never happens with fashion brands.
Here is the problem. The J12 trend ended. White ceramic watches now look like a specific era, the way frosted tips look like a specific era. And Chanel never figured out the men’s side. The Monsieur de Chanel, launched in 2016 with an in-house jumping-hours movement, is a good watch that nobody asked for from this brand. Chanel is a women’s fashion house. Men buying Chanel watches are buying into the fashion house, not the horology. The manufacture is real. The audience is borrowed.
Buying credibility
Chanel owns minority stakes in Bell & Ross, Romain Gauthier, F.P. Journe, and MB&F. The official story is supporting independent watchmaking. The arrangement benefits both sides. The independents get capital and a powerful ally. Chanel gets a genuine connection to high watchmaking. Just do not mistake it for charity.
Why it matters
Chanel did what no other fashion house did: bought a factory, hired watchmakers, gave them decades. That deserves respect. But let us not pretend the watch division would survive on its own merits. It is a subsidized hobby of a fashion empire. The watches are bought by Chanel customers, not watch people. The men’s line is an afterthought. The J12 had its moment and the moment passed.
What Chanel proves is that money plus patience can buy competence. What it has not proved is that anyone needs a Chanel watch the way they need a Chanel bag. One of those is a cultural object. The other is a nice watch with a fashion logo.
Official site: chanel.com
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