Easily one of the most avant-garde new luxury watches from a Swiss watchmaker in 2024 is the limited-edition (just 10 pieces were made) Hautlence Retrovision ’47 watch. It started not as a commercial timepiece, but rather as a concept. Displaying the watch for audiences at Watches & Wonders 2024, Hautlence apparently had enough courage to make this product a reality in the form of a very exclusive limited-edition series. Hautlence is owned by H. Moser & Cie and is an even more boutique high-end timepiece maker, having started as a futuristic alternative to the more classic H. Moser & Cie product line. The irony is that H. Moser & Cie. watches have progressively become more modern, while this Hautlence watch is decidedly vintage-minded with “retro” in the name and inspiration coming from a 1940s-era home appliance.
Hautlence was directly inspired by a particular home radio unit known as the Model 5A5, built by General Television & Radio Corp. The receiver is pictured in our previous news article about the Retrovision ’47 and features a texture green bakelite housing, a handle on top, a grill-style opening for the speaker, and a square dial to set the desired radio frequency channel. It is a beautiful appliance, and this piece of electronics history seemed like a good inspiration for a luxury mechanical timepiece. The wristwatch version doesn’t catch radio waves, but since mechanical watch movement speed frequency is calculated similarly, the watchmakers felt that a hertz is a hertz and that a timepiece and an old radio could be synergistically combined to create the emotions necessary to appreciate a composition like this on the wrist.
By a blogtowatch