Creating New History: Ulysse Nardin’s Approach to Marrying Past, Present, and Future

One of the core challenges among modern watchmakers is balancing past, present, and future—honoring the traditions of this centuries-old art form, harnessing new technologies, and looking toward the next generation of collectors. When you think of a brand like Ulysse Nardin, you might assume its focus is chiefly on the latter two. It was nearly 25 years ago that the brand paved the way for the use of silicon in watchmaking, a material that has now become vital to countless manufacturers across the industry. Ulysse Nardin debuted its silicon escapement wheel in the Freak, aptly named for its seemingly absurd design featuring no dial, no hands, and no crown—the first of its kind. “The Freak is counterculture in watchmaking,” asserts François-Xavier Hotier, President of Ulysse Nardin Americas. “It breaks all the rules we knew before.” 

In order to break the rules, you must know the rules, and Ulysse Nardin’s more than 175-year history is proof the brand knows a thing or two about traditional watchmaking. In the early days, the maison built a reputation for its marine chronometers and complex pocket watches. Even into the 21st Century, Ulysse Nardin has continued to emphasize its commitment to artistic craft, acquiring its own enamel-dial manufacture in 2011, a decade after the introduction of the Freak. Now, the latest incarnation of the Freak fully embodies the brand’s attention to the future, present, and past. 

At Watches & Wonders earlier this spring, I had the opportunity to take a deep dive into the newest addition to the Freak lineup and become fully immersed in the brand after touring its manufacturing facilities and heritage department as well as speaking with some key executives to better understand how the brand is balancing tradition with innovation, from collections like the Freak to materials used across the catalog. While I got all my questions answered and walked away with some key insights, the takeaways weren’t quite what I expected. I was surprised to learn that for Ulysse Nardin, its watches are merely vehicles to elicit a feeling. 

The Freak, for example, is undoubtedly a canvas for great watchmaking—a display of pioneering design and materials. Imagine it’s 1997. For hundreds of years, watches have largely looked the same, sharing a basic set of core components: a case, a dial, hands, a crown, a crystal. A young movement maker named Carole Forestier-Kasapi just won the Prix de la Fondation Abraham-Louis Breguet for her creation of a revolving movement with a mainspring housed in a donut-like barrel taking up almost the full diameter of the case. The concept watch notably lacked a crown. Instead, winding and setting was accomplished by turning the bezel. Shortly after the win, Forestier-Kasapi joined Ulysse Nardin. The brand was in an era of revival and reinvention following the Quartz Crisis and needed a fresh approach. Then CEO Rolf Schnyder saw the potential in Forestier-Kasapi’s design. However, serially producing the novel concept immediately posed challenges. 

Schnyder and Forestier-Kasapi relied on the expertise of the brand’s technical director Ludwig Oechslin to reimagine the concept while retaining its essence. The core issue was creating a more energy efficient design that could sufficiently power the movement. While it may sound simple, it was anything but. Overcoming the problem required installing the mainspring under the movement as well as relocating and reworking the barrel to become an active component of the time display. The result is the unmistakable Freak design we know and love with the going train serving as an oversized minute hand and the barrel cover serving as the hour hand. 

The creativity, teamwork, perseverance, and frankly genius poured into countless hours of development and prototyping is nothing short of mind-blowing, and yet this massive achievement is ultimately secondary to what the Freak stands for on a deeper level. It solidified Ulysse Nardin as a brand for the rule breakers, those marching to the beat of their own drum, those with an appreciation for serious technical prowess but who never quite felt they fit the mold of a traditional collector. 

Looking at the evolution of the Freak over the past two decades—for instance, the newest model—it’s evident that Ulysse Nardin stays true to this philosophy. With the Freak S Nomad (which Zach explores in great detail right here), the brand seamlessly achieves a balance of contemporary watchmaking and old school craft. It retains the instantly recognizable DNA of the Freak—the absence of a dial, hands, and crown—but here, the “spaceship caliber” (as Zach so eloquently puts it) lands on a guilloche disc. 

Guilloche is one of the oldest artforms that continues to be employed in modern watchmaking. The technique originally dates back to the 1500s. Early engine turning machines were used with materials like ivory and wood, but by the 1700s, they were adapted to engrave metal, like we commonly see today. For the Freak S Nomad, the guilloche disc cradling the movement features a classic diamond pattern achieved by an 18th century rose engine machine. The choice to incorporate such a traditional technique like guilloche into a thoroughly futuristic model like the Freak goes beyond the simple goal of marrying past, present, and future. The decision was highly intentional for its ability to evoke the senses of touch and sight with a texture reminiscent of waving sand dunes as an aircraft lands (or in this case a “spaceship caliber”). 

The lineage of the Freak, from the original reference to the recent Freak S Nomad, truly exemplifies the brand ethos of Ulysse Nardin and its approach to watchmaking, according to the brand’s Chief Product Officer, Jean-Christophe Sabatier. “The fact that we’ve chosen the Freak as our flagship is more recent—the model is only just more than 20 years old. And I think to this day, many people still don’t understand the entire concept—even two decades later, it’s ahead of its time. So, we decided to verticalize the collection—we have the Freak X, which is a more entry level piece that’s more approachable, and then Freak S and Freak One. We’ve always wanted to build this collection as an icon, so the GPGH win for the Freak One last year was a proud moment.”

Beyond the quite literal embodiment of past, present, and future within the Freak collection, this approach goes into Ulysse Nardin’s overall product design. “It’s very rare we make true vintage-inspired timepieces,” shares Sabatier. “But I’m constantly referring back to the history of the brand and, most importantly, the values and principles that have driven the products of the past.” 

A great example of this outside the Freak collection is the brand’s Diver X Skeleton. At the most basic level, this model merges Ulysse Nardin’s rich history of divers with its more contemporary Skeleton X range. It houses a modern manufacture caliber (which, of course, features a silicon escapement wheel) and boasts 200 meters of water resistance. However, according to Sabatier, its ties to Ulysse Nardin’s history go deeper, tracing back to a Diver Perpetual Calendar from the 80s. 

“Of course, we could have done a heritage reissue of this exact watch,” he states, “but that’s not the point, to just make an exact replica of a past model with a new movement.” Instead, his goal as Chief Product Officer is to elicit the same spirit of models past. “When I think about how to preserve our brand heritage, this is it. Of course, I’m constantly thinking about trends, where the market is going, the feedback we get from our clients. I pay attention, and I listen—this is my duty. But it’s also my duty to preserve the core values of the brand. If you want quick success, you’ll look to the former, but if you want to be recognized in the long term, you must understand who you are and keep your direction in everything you create.” 

Ulysee Nardin’s ability to embrace its “freaky” side and further push the bounds has notably grown in the past two years. In 2022, the brand was sold by its former parent company Kering (who continues to retain a stake in other major fashion houses like Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, and Alexander McQueen). The sale allowed Ulysse Nardin to reclaim its independent status and independent attitude. 

“We’ve really gotten back to the brand’s core focus,” explains Ulysse Nardin’s Chief Marketing Officer Virginie Franceries. “When you’re no longer just one of many brands within a group, you can have a more centralized strategy and one that’s longer term. Under Kering, we were only able to plan one to two years out, but now we can think five to ten years out, which is really exciting. At the same time, we can be more agile without a large hierarchy to approve decisions. Of course, it allows us more freedom, which is our DNA: to be bold, to take risks.” 

A core part of Ulysse Nardin’s efforts to be forward thinking and create new history for future generations has undoubtedly been in the pursuit of new materials. In recent years, this has become a buzzworthy endeavor across the industry, but for Ulysse Nardin, it began some three-decades ago, culminating in the silicon escapement wheel unveiled in the inaugural Freak. The brand didn’t stop there. In 2005, Ulysse Nardin launched the Freak Diamond Heart, which housed a patented escapement made from synthetic diamonds. Four years later, the brand combined its advancements in the application of silicon and synthetic diamonds to create DiamonSil, a patented material consisting of silicon coated with five microns of synthetic diamond, thereby eliminating the need for lubrication of the escapement altogether. 

Another key example of Ulysse Nardin’s efforts toward new materials is embodied in the Freak Innovision 2, which made its debut in 2017. This model employed new uses of silicon, like silicon coating to create jewel-free bridges and direct silicon bonding to further enhance the design of the escapement. In addition, the Freak Innovision 2 showcased new material experimentation with glass by employing a process similar to 3D-printing called FEMTOPrint. This “glass” material is composed of high-purity silica sand that, when electrically heated, creates a solid that’s transparent like glass or sapphire. The FEMTOPrint process allows this solid block to be shaped into components like the bridge for the escapement and balance as well as the minute hand. 

Today, Ulysse Nardin’s approach to new materials spans beyond their technical capabilities. Now, the brand is not only considering a particular material’s application but also its sustainability and environmental impact. “It’s always been at the core of Ulysse Nardin to explore new materials,” confirms Franceries, “but more recently, it’s something quite motivating for us to find materials that are original and creative, that enable some technical feat, and that allow us to do good. Ultimately, the goal is not just about discovering new uses of a material just as a marketing tool but for a greater purpose.” 

This work is epitomized in Ulysse Nardin’s latest launches: the Diver Net OPS and the Diver Skeleton OPS. For the Diver Net OPS, the brand built the case from 95% recycled stainless steel while the side parts and caseback are composed of Nylo and Carbonium. Ulysse Nardin uses a similar set of materials for the Diver Skeleton OPS, employing Carbonium on the unidirectional rotating bezel and the barrel cover at twelve o’clock. Both models are complete with the brand’s latest strap design, made in part from upcycled fishing nets. “Carbonium is a super lightweight, high-performance material made of carbon fibers from the aircraft industry that has a 40% lower impact on the environment than the traditional carbon fibers,” explains Franceries. “In 2020, we also began working with a French company called FIL&FAB who has developed a technique to upcycle fishing nets into plastic sheets, which we first used for our straps like those fitted on our newest divers.”

As a journalist in the watch industry, I have many opportunities like this one to get to the root of what brands are really about and what drives them to create beyond the business of selling watches. But it left me wondering how brands like Ulysse Nardin who seem to place so much weight on the more intangible experience of owning the watch are able to translate that to their customers. Turns out the answer was right in front of me. 

“Of course, digital media is vital to any company but even the most powerful campaign or article or social post can’t offer the same 360 immersion we can create at a fair like Watches & Wonders,” describes Franceries. “Sometimes it can be difficult to express Ulysse Nardin’s brand ethos through media. As Jean-Christophe explained, many people still don’t understand the entire concept of the Freak more than 20 years later. Fairs give us an opportunity to talk directly to our customers as well as retail partners and journalists like yourself. Within the booth, you can really step into the mind of the brand. Of course, you will also touch, feel, and experience the product, but it’s about more than that. It’s about creating the feeling we want to elicit when people think of Ulysse Nardin.”