I’ve Watched Hublot Defy Convention For 40 Years; Then Came Jeff Koons

Recently in New York, I joined Hublot and American artist Jeff Koons at Studio 525 in Chelsea for the official celebration of their recently announced partnership and the unveiling of the new watches. And while images of the watches have been circulating for days now, seeing them in person drives home just how unusual—and technically challenging—the fruit of  this collaboration really is.

After all, how do you make a solid mechanical watch look as though it has been inflated with air? That was the challenge with the new Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog by Jeff Koons. Rather than simply putting an image of Koons’s famous Balloon Dog sculpture on a dial, Hublot essentially reworked the architecture of its Classic Fusion.

The case, crystal, hands, indexes and even the signature Hublot screws have rounded, convex forms that give the watch an inflated appearance. The crown resembles a balloon valve, a tiny Balloon Dog appears on the seconds hand and even the metallic leather strap has a padded look. Offered in red, blue and silver, each version is limited to 200 pieces and retails for $25,100.

For Hublot CEO Julien Tornare, the challenge was giving Koons the artistic freedom to push the design while figuring out how to turn that vision into a functioning watch.

“When we make watches, as you all know very well, we are full of constraints,” Tornare said. “So much technique, so much design, so much creativity in such a small space. But when you collaborate with such an artist, you have to give him as much freedom as possible.”

Hublot’s job, he said, was then “to translate Jeff’s vision…into reality, into a watch that functions, that is strong enough, solid, water resistant, and meets all the constraints we know about watches.”

But meeting and conquering those challenges is what Hublot is about. I have witnessed that from the beginning. I was there in the early 1980s when Hublot was a fledgling brand pairing gold watches with rubber straps—a combination considered almost unthinkable in traditional Swiss watchmaking at the time. From there, the brand just continued its quest for being daring and different in looks, materials, mechanics and more. This “inflated” look though seems almost surreal: a new hurdle crossed by the brand.

Classic Fusion Balloon Dog is a great example. There is also  a second, dramatically different creation in the collaboration. The $488,000 MP-14 Origin by Jeff Koons is inspired by the artist’s Gazing Ball works and takes the concept in a more cosmic direction. Limited to 30 pieces, the sapphire and gem-set watch features Hublot’s first automatic central tourbillon, surrounded by concentric rings of diamonds and blue sapphires that appear to orbit a central sapphire dome.

Both were unveiled against a very New York backdrop. Koons’s sketches lined the walls of Studio 525, while huge, animated projections of his Balloon Dogs filled the soaring space.

I also had the opportunity to sit down with Koons, and meeting him gave me a somewhat different understanding of an artist whose work has long been polarizing. He is deeply philosophical—even existential—in the way he talks about his art.

 A seemingly straightforward question about watches can quickly become a discussion about time, humanity, life and our place in the universe. It made for a refreshing, if unexpectedly thought-provoking, departure from the typical watch interview.

When I asked about translating art known for its monumental scale onto something as small as the wrist, Koons went straight to the bigger idea.

“Plato would always say that the first thing you deal with in art is scale,” he said. “What I love about dealing with this timepiece is we’re really dealing with a scale that, yes, it’s on our wrist, but there’s something that also is very profoundly internal, and it’s within our mind.”

His point may have been that the watch may be tiny on teh wrist but the concept of time is huge — and everyone conceives of it differently. The question is how will “everyone” react to the Hublot Classic Fusion Ballon Dog by Jeff Koons watch.

Tornare is perfectly comfortable with the fact that these watches won’t be for everyone. “Yes, it’s very different. Yes, it’s disruptive,” he said. “I totally assume that people might love it or not like it. That’s fine.”

In many ways, that may be precisely why Koons and Hublot make sense together.