iW INTERVIEW:
ANTOINE PIN
ON SERPENTI
The new Bulgari Serpenti
Seduttori Tourbillon features
the world’s smallest tourbillon.
DURING LVMH WATCH WEEK, BULGARI MADE IT CLEAR THAT WOMEN
ARE A PRIORITY AUDIENCE FOR THE BRAND, even as many of its recent
award-winning Finissimo watches are targeted to male collectors. This
explains in part why Bulgari debuted a new set of Serpenti watches during
the debut event.
But Bulgari also took the opportunity to enhance its offerings to women
with a renewed attention to technical breakthroughs that in some ways
match the cutting-edge thinness of Finissimo.
Indeed, Bulgari’s highlight debut in Dubai, the Serpenti Seduttori
Tourbillon, features the world’s smallest tourbillon, a technical coup that
does double duty for the jeweler and watchmaker. In addition to empha-
sizing its collections for women, the new watch symbolizes Bulgari’s plans
to expand the use of mechanical movements within a broader range of its
feminine collections.
As Bulgari Managing Director, Watch Business Unit Antoine Pin explains
below, “Since we are a fully integrated manufacturer, why shouldn’t we
make high-end complications for ladies?”
We discussed this and other topics with Pin during the Watch Week
debut event.
The Bulgari Octo Finissimo
Automatic Satin-Polished Steel
movements in small sizes.
Secondly, we have built up incredible experience in micromechanics in
our quest to reduce the size of movements while maintaining their
performance. With this experience comes the appetite to go further. To see
what we can do.
Why focus for now on complicated movements?
It is somewhat easier to work on a small size tourbillon in limited numbers
then to work on large mechanical movements. It is more technically
complicated, but because of the production process, the questions you are
tackling are different.
Being a fully integrated high horology company, we have a better
understanding sometimes of these smaller volume, highly complicated
movements. Underlining this is the fact that we have a majority of clients
who are women. And since we are a fully integrated manufacturer, why
shouldn’t we make high-end complications for ladies?
Some would say that there are no clients for this, but we get requests for
this. We especially saw this with the Divas’ Dream. So what we are trying
here very much fits in with our philosophy.
iW: Why is it important to place mechanical movements
inside watches for women? Will you extend this work into additional, simpler movements?
Antoine Pin: We have two important reasons. First, Serpenti was born
with mechanical movements. And today there are very few mechanical We should, clearly. It makes sense. Yes, a few movements of the small size
do exist, from Rolex and Jaeger-LeCoultre, but these are very limited.
62 | INTERNATIONAL WATCH | SPRING 2020