The concept of a “mid-life crisis” has long had a negative connotation thanks to the word “crisis” implying a moment of difficulty, but I’d suggest we rethink this as a mid-life turning point. For Lilian Thibault, founder of Awake, this moment came when he reached a certain age and his kids began to grow. He took the opportunity to turn a mid-life crisis into a mid-life reinvention. After years of investing in other successful businesses, he decided to invest in himself and his own passions. Lilian had been an avid watch collector for more than two decades, and in 2018 he set out to create his own brand—Awake was born.
“As my kids are growing older, I’ve started to think more and more about the legacy that will be left behind for them,” Lilian told me. “I decided I wanted to bring my own brand to market that reflects the vision I would like to see in the world for the next generation. This is, in fact, why I chose the name ‘Awake,’ I have a mission to awaken people’s attention to beauty and what really matters in life.”
Lilian Thibault
To bring his vision to life, Lilian launched a Kickstarter to raise funds for production in 2018. The campaign was originally planned to run for a month, but the brand reached its goal of $30,000 within an hour and ended up raising $400,000—Lilian was clearly onto something, and his vision was resonating.
A year later, the brand unveiled its first collection aptly named “Origins.” In the spirit of thinking about what’s left behind for future generations, the Origins line incorporates a sustainability angle. The design integrates both recycled stainless steel and straps made from recycled plastic waste. This immediately caught the attention of the French President, Emmanuel Macron. Soon after, the French government commissioned Awake to create a sustainable timepiece that would be distributed to 100 global leaders at the annual G7 Summit addressing solutions for global issues like climate change, which was being held in Biarritz, France that year. The once again aptly named G7 watch became the next extension of Awake’s mission to highlight the world we’re leaving for future generations.
Awake Mission to Earth
In 2021, Awake was tapped again, this time by NASA. As part of the Mission to Earth project, Awake created—you guessed it—a watch called “Mission to Earth,” which you may recall our own Zach Kazan highlighting back in 2022. This model continued the brand’s sustainability mission, using recycled titanium from aerospace for its construction. However, it also incorporated a uniquely poetic story with the help of blockchain technology. For the first time in the history of watchmaking, a passive NFC chip was embedded directly in the watch’s sapphire crystal, giving the wearer a glimpse into the “the sensory and emotional shock felt by astronauts” when viewing the earth from space with footage from the International Space Station (ISS) cameras.
Awake’s next release came last year, continuing the celestial theme with a pair of watches showcasing meteorite dials, also covered in detail by Zach Kazan at their initial debut.
“The use of meteorite for a dial has been a relatively popular aesthetic in recent years, but for us, it has deeper meaning,” explains Lilian. “After our previous watch took us out into space, we wanted to come back down to Earth, and this is just what a meteorite does—it comes from outer space, enters the atmosphere, and crashes down on Earth. It is during this journey through the atmosphere and as it cools down on Earth that the meteorite gets the beautiful pattern we love. The meteorite we chose for our dials is four to five billion years old. When I think about anyone wearing this watch, now or in future generations, I want them to be reminded that in the context of the universe and all of time—billions of years—that our time here is so short, so precious.”
Later in 2023, Awake launched another collection that would begin laying the groundwork for the brand’s vision for its future. The Summetria line—once again covered in full detail by our own Zach Kazan—keeps the narrative rooted on Earth, this time tapping into the symmetry of nature and all living things. Here, Awake employs one of the oldest and most revered artistic crafts in the history of watchmaking, one that is the embodiment of symmetry: guilloche.
The Summetria collection is firmly more elevated and less sporty than the brand’s previous offerings. Now, we see Awake leaning further into this category and the use of artistic craft techniques with its latest launch: the Heritage Les Laques. Laquer is, of course, a very common application for watch dials. However, for this brand new collection, Awake brings a totally unique approach to the material, one that has never been used in watchmaking before: a Vietnamese lacquer method called Son Mai that incorporates silver lead lamination techniques.
“I am always looking around me for inspiration for our collections,” Lilian confessed. “One day I found myself staring at a painting in my office—one I got about twenty years ago when I went to Vietnam for the first time—and it’s all about lacquers. Although Japan is probably thought of as the most prestigious country for its Urushi lacquer, Vietnam is also among the three most important countries for lacquer, along with China. And I had the idea of bringing this Vietnamese lacquer technique to a watch dial.”
Son Mai is one of the oldest and most captivating traditional arts in Vietnam, dating back several millennia. Vietnamese artisans often incorporate other materials into the lacquer—including crushed eggshells, mother-of-pearl, or leaves of gold or silver—to add texture and relief. Awake has chosen to incorporate silver leaf into its lacquer dials to give them a distinctive and mesmerizing depth.
Within the new Heritage Les Laques collection, you’ll find four colorways, each more stunning than the next. Each dial is handcrafted by master artisans, requiring a total of 32 steps and countless hours of meticulous work, and therefore each dial is entirely unique.
“As with everything we do at Awake, the incorporation of the Son Mai technique is not just about the aesthetic beauty it offers—it’s about the deeper meaning,” Lilian clarified. “I would guess that the average person has never heard of this technique unless you have some connection to Vietnamese culture. So, with this watch, we are elevating an ancient artform to a new audience—one who can appreciate such history and artistry—and of course, keeping a tradition alive for the next generation. In everything we do, this is the goal of the brand.”
Also within the new Heritage Les Laques line, Awake has chosen to debut a newly redesigned and more refined logo just in time for the brand’s fifth anniversary. Altogether, this new collection is emblematic of the push and pull between the brand’s past and present, developed over just five short years. Awake
