Latest Review
November 19, 2024 
AWAKE is a French horological brand with a very unique take on the future of watches. They are intent on using the culture and traditions of métiers d’art—or artisanal craftsmanship—to carve a new pathway apart from trends that so often get repeated time and time again in this particular industry. Prior to the Windup Windup Watch Fair, we met up with the AWAKE team, Lilian Thibault and Thibaut Sacre, on The High Line in NYC for a quick discussion on the brand, the importance of métiers d’art, their latest Sơn Mài collection, and what the future holds for AWAKE.
Hello Lilian and Thibault, thanks so much for speaking with us about your brand. When you developed the company and named it AWAKE, what did that name mean to you and what do you want it to mean for your customers?
The idea behind the name was to raise attention to the things that truly matter. When we’re awake, we’re aware. And when we are aware, that is when we’re open to culture, craftsmanship, and transmitting important ideas to others. We don’t want to just transmit TikTok to the next generation. We want to transmit passion. We want to transmit talent. And this is what our focus on métiers d’art is all about as well. A watch itself is a very good medium to do this, because the watch is about time. It reminds us that we have time, but to make the most of it. We like being “awake” and open to this philosophy.
AWAKE’s stated mission is to “raise awareness of the Earth’s beauty and its vulnerability through objects.” How do you put this into practice and what does it say about the message and legacy you’re hoping to leave?
In order to stay really consistent with our vision, we use craftsmanship as a technique in our watches because it’s all about a long process that takes resources from what the earth can give us. For example, the sanded lacquer technique used in our new Sơn Mài collection is something that you get from the trees. It shows that nature is capable of doing great things. By using this raw material, instead of using only industrial processes and man-made materials, we’re communicating many ideas around both the earth and humanity. And this technique is something which is less harmful, so that is good and beautiful as well.
What made you want to choose a watch brand as your legacy venture?
It’s less about our previous experience. It’s connected to our passion. We’ve been into watches—like deeply into watches, passionate about watches—for more than 20 years now. So it’s something that we love. We love the product. We love the instrument. Yes it’s a tool, but more importantly, it’s instrumental in our lives. We’re always trying to optimize our lives. And we think that the watch is the best companion to do this. Well, best and worst, because it reminds us every single minute that time flies, you know. We like the idea of giving a watch a new sense of utility. It’s something that can represent our values and a certain vision of the world. A watch is always running, it’s always… awake. We love that.
In our past conversations, you’ve used the phrase ‘design the future.’ Can you go into exactly what that means to you and how this concept guides your decisions around your brand as well as your products?
We always try to design the future, by doing something new. Take our new Sơn Mài in the Amethyst lacquer dial color. This version features an intense purple livery. It’s deep and mysterious. It’s a color that’s often associated with precious objects and mystical concepts. We feel it provides a sense of calmness. We think this particular tone of purple is that perfect balance between blue, which symbolizes peace, and red, which evokes passion and intensity. There are not that many watches with a purple dial, let alone handcrafted ones using two ancestral Vietnamese techniques: Sơn Mài sanded lacquer and pure silver leaf gilding. What’s important to us is that we’re doing something that is truly new, not just for the sake of being first, but to remain consistent with our vision and push craftsmanship forward.
AWAKE recently under when a brand refresh. Can you talk a little bit about the development of your new logo?
We recently added a logomark. It’s designed to envoke the four elements of air, earth, water, and fire—intertwined to represent the balance AWAKE seeks between innovation, tradition and respect for the environment. This mark can be seen on our crowns of our latest collection. We also updated the logotype as well. We wanted to show the difference by changing our logo itself. It used to be a lowercase logotype in the past. The company has matured and now it is all capitalized. This also shows that something totally new was coming. We are really comfortable with the watches we’ve created in the past, in terms of quality. However, as we continue to turn our vision to this métiers d’art approach, we wanted to show that something totally new was coming. This is a new AWAKE. Don’t try to look at our past to try to understand our future.
When a customer straps on one of your watches, what do you hope they feel each time they look at the watch on their wrist?
We hope it makes them feel amazed, touched, and reconnected to personal emotions and sensations. In an age characterized by ultra-connectivity, superficiality and self-absorption, wearing an AWAKE watch is like belonging to a family, a community of people who share a taste for and love of beauty, attention to detail, and curiosity. We think it’s a community with a desire to know and understand crafts, cultures, and traditions that are sometimes on the verge of being lost. We must all be ambassadors of the beautiful things we must preserve and pass on, of the beautiful stories that must be told.
Continued…
Wearing an AWAKE watch should remind you of the very best in human beings: their passion, their patience, their natural talent and taste for art, their desire to pass on a cultural heritage of which they are ultimately only a relay, but without which it would simply no longer exist. To wear an AWAKE watch is a form of openness, transmission, and reconnection with others, and is ultimately there to make people smile. May every owner of an AWAKE watch be proud to wear it for what it says about their values and love of things of beauty.
For this question, let’s pretend that we’re going to take a time machine and we’re going to take this time machine 20 years into the future to the year 2044. What does awake look like in the year 2044? What future will you have designed at that time?
Our ambition is for AWAKE to become a distinctive brand in the watchmaking landscape, as much for its philosophical approach as for the originality, quality and creativity of the timepieces it imagines. We see it as a brand capable of appealing to both the casual enthusiast and the discerning collector who can’t find a similar watch anywhere else—a brand capable of surprising with its constant drive for innovation, its uniqueness and its ability to stir emotions.
We envision a few boutiques around the world, imagined as places to live and meet, where watches, literature and artwork would rub shoulders, and where we could meet the artists and craftsmen with whom we collaborate. We see AWAKE as a brand with a new generation of consumers and enthusiasts who understand that pleasure is at the heart of everything, and who want to wear a watch that truly characterizes them.
So knowing all of the attributes of the AWAKE brand, if you were to make a non-watch product, what do you think it would be?
Perhaps we would create a restaurant. One with a simple but elegant setting, where you’d feel at home, and where you’d enjoy meeting up with family, friends, and enthusiasts. It would be a place where you could discover dishes and wines from all over the world, inspiring us to travel, to be curious, and to awaken our senses. We imagine a restaurant whose chefs would be able to convey their history, culture, and know-how. Just as a watchmaker brings a watch to life, chefs would bring masterful dishes to life in front of us, performing gestures that seem easy but are the result of years of work, learning, patience and passion, handed down from generation to generation.
The AWAKE restaurant, if you will, would be a culinary journey aimed at reconnecting us with the simple pleasures and values that make our lives so rich. In watchmaking as in cooking, there’s a constant desire to share, to exchange, and to bring that extra touch of soul that makes all the difference.
