Wait a seconde/seconde/: A Conversation with Romaric André

If you’re involved in the watch industry to any degree, even as a collector, you’ve definitely heard of seconde/seconde/, or at least seen his work. Timex, Bausele, Lima, Squale, Atelier Wen, Bamford Watch Co., Spinnaker, Furlan Marri, Maen, Sequent, Isotope, Louis Erard, Vulcain, Nivada Grenchen — high end, entry level, micro brand, independent, and large established companies. Romaric André (seconde/seconde/) has vandalized the world of watches at every level. He makes us smile, and causes many of us to view this large and serious industry with a bit of levity and added consideration. 

I connected with Romaric via Instagram. During the month of January my hand was broken, so instead of posting my own wrist shots I thought it would be fun to highlight friends in the Instagram watch community. One such friend had a Timex x seconde/seconde/ Polar collaboration with a wonderful whirling penguin rotating for a seconds hand. I made a comment in the caption stating that I wish I had jumped on the Timex x seconde/seconde/ collaboration, and moments later Romaric popped into my DM’s to let me know where I could get one at retail price. It brought me such joy to connect with him and get the watch, but it also opened the door for me to conduct an interview and get to know a bit about the man behind all the fun. 

Although it might seem like seconde/seconde/ has been part of our community only recently, he’s actually been involved with watches for some time. After going to school in France for business, and trying some internships in finance, he started a watch company with a childhood friend. “We managed to raise money around a product merging electronics and high-end horology. That’s when I met people in the watch industry. After five years, never achieving profitability, investors called it quits.”  Romaric went on to tell me that he took this hard and didn’t know how to rebound. And proving the notion that failure is only truly failure if you didn’t learn anything, Romaric figured out what he needed to do to stay in the watch industry that he’d become so passionate about. “I came up with something that did not require a team, did not require me to raise funds, and where I could try and implement my creativity that I never really used before. I set up a project where nobody could tell me what to do or what not to do.” 

Before all the collaborations, Romaric got his start with vintage watches. “Like many people, I feel that vintage watches have a superpower […] they encapsulate what we project on them. New watches always imply a question, ‘why a new watch considering almost everything has been done?’ A vintage watch does not imply this legitimacy questioning. It does not have to justify its being.”  This made vintage watches the perfect canvas in Romaric’s eyes. Pieces that were so established, so lived in, so ingrained in our collective consciousness as collectors, that it was time to make a mark. 

“Without the need for big funds, I could source a few [vintage Omegas and Rolexes], and try my luck with this idea I had of changing watch hands. I had charming, quality pieces that I [could use] to reveal a new perspective with the potential to be a bit shocking.” With this idea of being shocking from the get-go, Romaric saw himself as a vandal, but without being destructive. The original hands were not destroyed, just removed. This balance of showing respect while creating shock and awe was an important one to strike for Romaric. It triggers an “immediate visual clash. Your brain feels something’s not right, right? That creates immediate visual questioning.” 

Romaric’s endeavor to intrigue through visual questioning did precisely what he’d hoped — we as watch enthusiasts noticed. And soon after came collaborations with brands. Now, you may think that Romaric’s need to not be told what to do might mean that some collaborations are impossible, and you would be right. However, as always with Romaric, that balance of respect is forever present. “I understand them [watch brands]. They have a DNA and a brand is not meant to break that DNA too much or too often. I really understand and respect that. And brands understand me. They understand that I will do only what I want to do. They know that I am not here to go with their DNA and parrot the narrative. […] At the end of the day we try different ideas. If one suits both parties, good. If no idea finds the sweet spot, then that’s it. Dead ends happen. All good.” 

According to Romaric, there are many factors that go into him choosing a collaboration, “but the main main main thing is ‘do I have an idea or concept that excites me?’ […] It’s all about concept. The volumes, the attractiveness of the brand, price positioning, the fit with the people behind the brand. All of this is secondary. The concept is my North Star and the rest will follow.” 

With the sheer volume of work that’s come out in the last couple of years, of course there are those who just don’t have a taste for the seconde/seconde/ collaborations. Some may find the popularity overblown, or the statements to be too tongue-in-cheek, and I wanted to know what Romaric thinks of the criticisms circling his work. “We have the incommensurable luck of working in a field where there is a lot of passion. A lot of passionate people that do, that analyze, that document, or that comment, or share their opinion, or advice, or a little bit of everything. That makes this field extremely living and active. We have to embrace all this energy and be grateful for it. Being my first hater and my first supporter, I am quite ok with the spectrum of reactions.” I thought this to be such a measured response for someone so contradictory, and then… “Of course I will contradict and debate if you start walking all over my work.” He calls this a ‘sweet small tension’ that he doesn’t mind receiving, but can also dish out, and that this ‘sweet small tension’ does indeed influence his creative process. 

At this point I wanted to know more about Romaric as a person, and I asked him more about his other hobbies outside of being an artist.  Instead of addressing the question at hand, he pointed out that he does not consider himself ‘an artist.’ “I usually consider artists as people with a fire inside them, urging them to express themselves in a way or another. I don’t think I have this fire in me. I’m definitely passionate about my job, but I think I’m just a creative person trying to apply his contrarian touch on things for the pleasure of contradicting…for the pleasure of suggesting that there’s another perspective.” 

I found this response particularly interesting as I had, at this point, alluded to his artistic nature at least four times in my line of questioning, but it wasn’t until I specifically called Romaric ‘an artist’ that he broke protocol. This leads me to think that there is more reasoning behind Romaric’s need to be contrarian than I had originally thought, but far be it from me to place a label on anyone. As far as I’m concerned, so long as creativity and passion are present, we are all capable of making powerful statements; and, I’d personally call Romaric André (seconde/seconde/) a mixture of a satirist, a comedian, a passionate entrepreneur, a vandal, a troll, and a designer.

So, what’s next for seconde/seconde/? “I have three axis in mind: 1. Keeping seconde/seconde/ alive in the watch world. 2. Bringing seconde/seconde/ outside the watch world by collaborating with brands outside horology. 3. I’m obsessed with building my own watch brand, distinct yet close to seconde/seconde/. I’m thinking a lot about that, but some days I feel confident and some other days I feel like I don’t have what it takes…Another example of my own internal battle, I guess. Time will tell.” 

For now Romaric works to make us smile and to question the norms of the watch industry. And at home, as he told me in our interview, he raises his children, argues with his wife, and tries not to bore everyone around him with watches.