Eric the Watch King
The World's Leading Independent Watchmaker Shares His Approach to Watchmaking
Josh Sims
"Where the ideas come from is the big mystery to me, and sometimes you have to take the time, go out for lunch, and then, say, one word pops out of a conversation and you have the answer," enthuses Eric Giroud, who once found inspiration in a cookie. "And then I have to sit back in my office, start sketching and the nightmare of realising that idea begins..."
Giroud's is likely not a name you've heard of, unlike that of his many clients, from Vacheron Constantin to Tissot, Harry Winston to Boucheron, Van Cleef & Arpels, Louis Erard and independent brands Speake-Marin, Rebellion and MB&F, not to mention – because, contractually, he can't - many more household names too. He's won at the Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix, the Oscar's of the watch world. Indeed, Giroud is arguably the leading independent watch designer now at work, with brands looking to give their output some more spark calling him up at his Geneva atelier.
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"There are more independent watch brands now, and they need an independent designer because they often have great ideas but not the skills to realise them and, well, big brands have their own design studios but sometimes need to look beyond that to find a fresh perspective," explains Giroud. "The danger is that they end up designing the same watch over and over."
Enter Giroud, who worked as an architect and product designer for a decade – turning his eye to cutlery, perfume bottles, mobile phones, furniture and the like – before a watch project came in that nobody wanted to take on. He wasn't a watch obsessive, and still isn't, he admits - and for much of his life hasn't worn a watch – but he saw it as a design challenge like any other.
"Actually, watches have very specific design parameters - if a watch has to be water-proof, and most are now, that's just one of the technical considerations," he explains. "And then, of course, you're working to give a personality to a very small space, so it's all about very fine details. Sometimes after a meeting in which there's a lot of talk of tourbillons and complex mechanisms I sit in the car and think 'what was that all about?'. For me it's the aesthetic that makes the watch. It's the same with a building – you don't live in the walls or the roof, but the spaces in between."
Indeed, far from feeling, as some do, that the Swiss watch industry has, for all of its health, reached something of a creative impasse – retrenching in endless archive re-issues from a time when it habitually produced more distinctive pieces - Giroud wants to reassure that even getting that right is much harder than it looks.
"I'm not saying it's all to my taste, but watch design generally is so much better than it was when I turned to it 20 years ago," he says. "Yes, there's still that habit of raiding the archives, but that's not just being lazy. To take beauty from another era and make it right for today, to evolve it, isn't easy. Every single detail has to be reassessed."
One imagines that such a culture doesn't leave much room for the maverick, though – and Giroud would like to see some bolder designs hit the market. "A watch should say something," he says. "After all, nobody actually needs a mechanical watch." But he doesn't mind. In fact, when he starts to talk about having to work with a brand's marketing department, it's not with a groan, but with the refreshing acceptance both that they know their audience, and that they are his client. It's a lesson for any freelancer.
"You can show a brand your ideas and they can be excited or they can say 'whoa, that's way too much for us' - and that's cool," he says, "because the watch I'm designing isn't for me, it's for the brand. In architecture you learn a very important notion: it's just a design. It's just something on a piece of paper. It's not real but just a step in the whole process."
Giroud rises early, starting work at 5 a.m., powered by coffee and the right choice of music – something soft and repetitive for deep thinking, something more expressive, supportive, propelling, when he's sketching. He works alone, occasionally printing and cutting out paper shapes of the latest iteration of his design to try it on his wrist - he's a dedicated clothes shopper and, he says, knows all too well that he can see a picture of an amazing shirt, only to be disappointed trying it on.
"I love the details, the colour, the fabrics and one day," he says, "I'll get around to designing my own jacket, my own shirt, my own pants - why can't I just find the right pair of pants? But I won't ever do socks. I hate socks and have since I was a kid. It's the sensation on the feet. It must be psychological."
But Giroud's decision to focus on designing watches has proven a good one, and not just because it's kept him busy. It's even had a kind of fortuitous seal of approval. Shortly after Giroud met his wife, she invited him that winter to her family ski chalet to meet some of her extended family. "I met her uncle there and, beyond that, had no idea who he was, but we got talking about watches and later he sent me some books," recalls Giroud. Turns out it was Jack Heuer, great grandson of the founder of the Heuer (later Tag Heuer) watch business, and now its honorary chairman.
"He gave me lots of good advice, not so much about watch design but about how to get organised, how to make things happen - and every year we still do a tour of the Basel watch fair together," says Giroud.
These days it's likely more Giroud, rather than his wife's uncle, who's the star of the show. Even if nobody is quite sure who that mild-mannered, sockless guy is.
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