Fun Facts About Franck Muller Watches
Franck Muller watches are distinct in style, revolutionary in design, and highly complicated in their mechanisms.
Franck Muller, the co-founder of the eponymous brand, started as a pocket watch restorer. In his 20s, he introduced to his private clients his first-ever collection of wristwatches — all with complicated movements. Immediately, the watch industry took notice. At the height of the quartz crisis, Muller represented ‘hope’ for the new era of mechanical watches.
Watches with edgy, bold, and avant-garde designs and complications were the cornerstone of the brand. To say the least, there is nothing average about a Franck Muller watch — a legacy that it has maintained through the years.
For the Franck Muller novice, we’ve rounded up a few interesting facts about the brand that you may never know about.
Franck Muller Is A Relatively Young Brand
Compared to the other big guns in the luxury watch industry, Franck Muller is a relatively young manufacturer. Only 29 years old, the House of Franck Muller was founded in Geneva in 1992 by Muller and Vartan Sirmakes. It quickly rose to fame due to its strong in-house expertise in Haute Horlogerie.
A graduate of Ecole D’horlogerie De Genève, Muller developed a passion for all things mechanical. It didn’t come as a surprise that he would, later on, devote his career to creating highly complicated watches. After years of working as a restorer for auction houses and luxury watch brands, Muller started creating mechanical watches under his own name.
In 1991, he met Sirmakes, a watchmaking enthusiast and casemaker. Not long after, Muller asked him to create and design cases for his new movements. This started a legendary partnership that saw some of the most innovative watch complications in watchmaking history.
Franck Muller Is Known As The ‘Master of Complications’
Muller realised early on in his career that there was a demand for unique and complicated watches. Hence, he decided to regularly produce complications that the world had never seen before. These complications are now known as the ‘World Premieres’.
Since 1986, Muller has been creating handcrafted, highly complicated, and innovative watches, thereby challenging a conservative industry that values tradition over novelty. Case in point: he created a tourbillon visible from the front — a first-ever in the watchmaking history.
In 1986 and 1987, Muller introduced a tourbillon with jumping hours and a tourbillon with a minute repeater, respectively. In the same manner, he introduced an inverted tourbillon perpetual calendar with a minute repeater in 1989.
Slowly but surely, Muller started winning over even the most orthodox and purist of watch aficionados.
Franck Muller Makes Watches More Interesting
Certainly not one to follow trends, nor afraid to set one, Franck Muller decided to defy the concept of time with a new collection called the Crazy Hours, launched in 2013. Despite the numerals being in complete disorder, the watch keeps perfect time with the help of its innovative jumping hour mechanism.
Other iconic complications by Franck Muller include the very first tri-axial tourbillon in the world, launched in 2004. There is also the Aeternitas Mega with 36 complications and 1,483 components introduced in 2007. Another is the Giga Tourbillon featuring the biggest tourbillon ever incorporated in a wristwatch, launched in 2011.
One of his avid supporters, Elton John, even credits Franck Muller with revolutionising and making men’s watches ‘more interesting’.
Franck Muller Watches Are Uniquely-shaped
Mention Franck Muller and the Cintrée Curvex — its most iconic shape — always comes to mind. From the curved case and unique contours to the fun and unique numeral design, Cintrée Curvex watches are distinctly Franck Muller-made.
At a time when round and rectangular watches dominated the market, Franck Muller introduced a case with a rather odd, tonneau shape and a curved body. At that moment, the brand’s unique identity was born.
In the same manner, the dials on the Cintrée Curvex watches are equally exquisite. The curve must be perfect to follow the shape of the case, without comprising the details and craftsmanship. In addition, Franck Muller also introduced dials in vibrant colours, such as royal blue.
Among its outstanding Cintrée Curvex timepieces include Casablanca, Vanguard, Heart to Heart, Croco Collections, and Master Banker.
Franck Muller Has Its Own Watch Fair
Held every year for the past 29 years in Watchland — Franck Muller’s headquarters in Genthod, Geneva, Switzerland — the World Presentation of Haute Horlogerie (WPHH) is Franck Muller’s very own watch exhibition.
There’s more to the WPHH than a watch fair dedicated to the finest new timepieces of the brand. Besides that, it serves as a testament to the brand’s pioneering independent spirit. Welcoming thousands of guests each year, the fair has launched some of the brand’s most exclusive collections.
In true Franck Muller fashion, the annual fair is one of the most anticipated events in the watch industry. It has charmed many Franck Muller enthusiasts. In addition, it showcases the brand’s exquisite watchmaking legacy to all.
For another fun fact on a luxury watch brand, you may also like our story behind the Omega symbol.
