pursuing identity
Dear friends,
It is now 7 months since I’ve set out on my own, departing from what I would only describe as the acme of independent watchmaking. The moment was and remains very clear in my memory. Everyone, including myself a bit, surprised and puzzled over my decision to leave upon telling them. I often lost myself in those moments of laughter, the setting sun shining through those ceiling-tall window panes. The space being the culmination of deep thought on ambiance, meaning, knowledge. I often found myself relating to this identity as a means of refuge from our times. In that space, it was easy and natural to flow into a particular thoughtfulness and circumscribe one’s thoughts.
Our era loves transient images and cursory thoughts. It makes itself out to act as celeritous, while in-fact it is the result of a sort of negligence. Loops that loop endlessly, eras that are reiterated (or at least attempted) to the point the medium through which they speak, burdened by reorganization, style, and iterative design, are left remiss. It has been, if I may say, strewn together from moments purloined. Moments not of our collective experience. We know history operates in cycles, often reminding us of ideas from antiquity that have stood the test of time. Their notable independence as thought equaled only by their preservation of expressive freedom.
The beauty I give to Havid Nagan must resist this state of affairs. It must evade a very particular sense of joy - on my part as the designer - and reconcile, not debase, the expression of this medium of luxury. Within the context of watchmaking, this resistance is proven to be more fundamental by parameters restrained only by one’s unique experience; a thoughtful and original use of space (dial layout, placement of indications), manipulating the interaction of the natural (I.e light) with the created object. This, where it exists, is the power of creating identity - a concept that has, at least within our current climate, been actively advocated against. Our time calls for the championing of homogeneity, a time of the frenzied rush to the mainstream. I often think to Blaise Pascal, known to wear a wristwatch, as the predicate for identity by way of wearing watches. That term - “identity.” Do you, collector, too, feel it fleeting at times? Like you are endlessly pursuing your own becoming?
In the current development of HN01 Lucine, I am faced with, among many other challenges, the introduction of the design language of the brand moving forward. In other words, its identity. The case shape, one pillar of said identity, will remain largely the same but further nuanced. The introduction I refer to is dial layout. I have had particular fondness for atypical design; things resembling but not abiding by one’s expectations. Designing the finer details and maintaining harmony, balance, and a certain composure is a challenge in and of itself. There are, of course, the technical details to consider. The tiniest changes, no matter how seemingly insignificant, dictate the entire calibration of the watch be rearchitected. Off-centering the hour/minute indications, using applied indices in place of printing, dial material, finding a suitable caliber that accommodates your idea to start off… The R&D process is an enlightening one, and to my experience, humbling. It is, as they say, an act of balancing the technical and design constraints while moving in evolution towards the identity in mind. Perhaps the most exciting part of the current development is my exposure to a sense of evolution of a Havid Nagan watch, a dynamism in forming identity I have observed from the past greats.
It must have been Breguet’s own identity that drew me in then, a flirtation with minimalism, and even stylishness has been named, but the normal definition is a bit loose to me, unless it is conveying the idea that what needed to be shown was purposeful, and not lacking in resoluteness. Actually then, in this case, minimalism was a way to escape indulgence by narrowing the appetite. This, in the most significant way, has helped me understand design by highlighting what has purpose and what will set the aesthetic parameters for the brand’s language moving forward. Entertain me this, collector, a question on Franck Muller - is it too audacious to say the man set the tone, relevant still, for the new era in modern watchmaking? To let go of preconditions, not only those tethered to a wristwatch, but to oneself. Is it then too audacious to ask, collector, that these intricate mechanical gadgets be celebrated first and foremost for their idealism, rather their pragmatism? It is the inadvertent guidance of these greats, not limited and unbeknownst to them, I look for inspiration and flow. Not for recycling the conventions they’ve set, but in the freedom they reveled in not having to put up with what others wanted. Here, as was the case of the afore-mentioned, Havid Nagan’s vision and offering should not so much see itself within a rather decorative expression but rather as a nuanced point of personal contemplation. A medium for which modern flâneurs, if I may, observe and interact with their world.
Dear collector, I know that as an avid enthusiast, this is important to you – and I imagine the negligent use of the word ‘luxury’ has rendered it, admittedly, the opposite of what it was meant to define. It is such, paradoxically, that our society’s infatuation with everything luxury led to nothing of the sort, the opposite, in fact, I fear. I now define the term as the means to stand out from all else, to express freedom without fetter. To endlessly develop one’s identity as a means of distinction. It is not without realizing I am at the mere beginning of a long journey at which the end goal - made more bearable and achievable as a culmination of smaller goals - awaits a truer meaning of the word ‘independence.’ The vision is clear and as one of you mentioned, agreeably, in a recent conversation, “Stay true to it.”
An enthusiast above all else,
Aren J Bazerkanian