If you choose to, it’s really easy to look around the watch industry and throw up your hands in frustration that there are no new ideas. Even as we move through a period of what many hardcore enthusiasts agree is a new Golden Age of inventiveness in the affordable watch space, there’s a lot of evidence that many are playing it safe. Brands both big and small, at all price points, tend to revert to proven formulas that they know will work for them. The idea, after all, is to sell watches, so you can’t really blame anyone for deciding to lean on past performance in the hopes that it will predict future success. But that makes a brand like Lebond that much more interesting. They’re not leaning on any proven formulas, and not only are they trying something genuinely different, but brand owner Asier Mateo is actually relinquishing control of the design of each piece year in and year out.
I would describe Lebond as a fairly high concept and niche brand. The style of these watches will not appeal to everyone, and collectors would seem to benefit from a long view of the brand – it will all make a lot more sense in five, ten, or twenty years, if all goes according to plan. The idea is relatively simple: each year, Lebond releases a new watch designed by a different well known architect. Mateo is an architect himself, and founded the brand as a vehicle to expose watch lovers to the work of the world’s most talented architects. Of course, he’s also aiming these watches squarely at the architecture community in a way that no other brand I can think of has attempted. Not only are the watches closely tied to well known architects, the luxurious packaging is designed like a large format book, and meant to be displayed on a coffee table or on a bookshelf. Mateo’s vision is that in time collectors will own many volumes of these watches, and that they’ll comprise a coherent and uniquely focused collection.
There would seem to be risks involved in this approach. Being able to design one thing (a building) does not necessarily mean you’ll be able to design another (a watch). There have been enough misguided attempts at combining watches and cars to tell us as much. But Lebond, as a brand, seems open to experimentation and the avant-garde. Their first watch, the Siza (designed by Alvaro Siza) has a square case tilted a quarter turn, so it presents as a diamond on the wrist. Hands, numerals, and other details are custom designed specifically for the watch. There are no off-the-shelf parts, save the movement (an ETA 2892 automatic caliber).
Last year’s watch, designed by Alvaro Siza
The latest Lebond, the Souto Moura, is a design by the architect Eduardo Souto de Moura. It’s a lugless, circular case design, with an off-center dial that finds 12:00 tilted 30 degrees clockwise. It’s de Moura’s take on a classic driver’s watch, with clean lines and only and simple markings to tell the time.
The watch is also notable for being extremely thin, coming in at just 7.6mm tall (its diameter is listed at 38.5mm. It uses the same ETA movement as the Siza and is crafted from titanium, which ought to make it wear extremely light on the wrist. Two versions are available: the “Original” with a cream colored dial, and the “Dark,” with a gray toned dial.
The first two Lebond watches each come in at EUR 2,700. This is a competitive price point, to be sure, but it seems like niche watch brands are capable of having success with unusual projects at this level, as long as they find their audience. It’s not hard to imagine Lebond selling these watches to the same group of architecture connoisseurs year in and year out, with pure watch enthusiasts jumping in when a specific design speaks to them. That, of course, will be the key. Ultimately Lebond (and their architect partners) will need to create compelling watches year after year, and conventional wisdom would seem to say that it might be difficult to maintain a consistent design language with a new chef in the kitchen for every project. But that’s a watch enthusiast concern, and these watches are a clear attempt to appeal to another, very different, type of enthusiast community. Lebond
