Hautlence

Hautlence is an independent Swiss watchmaker founded in 2004 in Neuchâtel by a team of five: principal co-founders Renaud de Retz and Guillaume Tetu, alongside Jean Plazenet, Jean-Christophe Chopin, and Alain de Forges. Both de Retz and Tetu had accumulated experience at industry heavyweights — Longines, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and TAG Heuer — but decided to leave the world of corporate watchmaking to pursue an entirely different vision: watches in which time is not read but watched, where mechanical animation is the point of the exercise, and where the dial is a stage rather than a surface. The name Hautlence is an anagram of Neuchâtel, a nod to the brand's regional roots that also encodes its philosophy of rebellion within tradition. The brand moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 2013.

The founding proposition was radical for 2004: reject conventional hands and circular displays entirely. The inaugural HL01, presented in 2005 as the HL06 in white gold, established the visual and mechanical vocabulary that would define Hautlence for years — a rectangular 16:9 case proportion directly referencing television screen ratios, a multi-level open-worked dial, and a manually wound in-house calibre featuring a jumping hour, retrograde minutes, and trailing seconds. The connecting rod mechanism for the retrograde minutes — borrowed from locomotive engineering and applied to watchmaking, referred to as the Lokomotive arm — was a genuine technical innovation that distinguished Hautlence from every other independent of the era. Developing an entirely proprietary in-house movement from the outset, for a brand only one year old, was extraordinarily ambitious and placed Hautlence alongside the pioneering names of that independent watchmaking boom — De Bethune, MB&F, and Greubel Forsey, all founded in the same two-year window of 2002–2004.

The first six years produced four in-house calibres in rapid succession. The HLQ (2009) added a fast-correcting jumping date indicator to the jumping hour and retrograde minutes architecture, in a round case with a distinctive honeycomb dial. The HLC followed in 2010. The HL2.0 (2011) — and its manually wound companion the HL2.1 — was the technical apex of the early era: the first Hautlence self-winding movement, it displays the hour on a half-trailing chain belt that advances horizontally across the dial from left to right, the retrograde minutes arc over a 180° semi-circular display, and the escapement is mounted vertically, fully visible through the open dial. The 'Concepts d'Exception' series based on the HL2.1 was produced in limited runs of 28 pieces and represented the ultimate expression of what Hautlence's mechanical imagination could achieve. None of this, however, insulated the brand from the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which decimated demand for expensive avant-garde novelties. De Retz left in 2009; Tetu fought alone; by 2012 the brand filed for bankruptcy.

Georges-Henri Meylan — the former CEO of Audemars Piguet who had recently retired and found that he didn't enjoy golf — saw the potential and acquired Hautlence through his family holding company MELB for CHF 1 plus all its debts. MELB — which had previously invested only in real estate and medical technologies — made Hautlence its first watchmaking acquisition, followed three months later by H. Moser & Cie. and Precision Engineering AG. Guillaume Tetu was retained as Hautlence's leader until 2016. The MELB acquisition allowed Hautlence to restructure its positioning, introducing more accessible pieces powered by third-party movements (the Soprod-based Destination line from 2014, starting at CHF 20,000) alongside the continued production of haute complications. The Invictus collection (2014–2017) featured a collaboration with football legend Eric Cantona — a brand ambassador — including the Invictus Morphos. The Playground collection (2016) took a deliberately whimsical turn: the Pinball watch and the Labyrinth watch actively circumvented time-telling as their primary purpose, making explicit what was always implicit in the brand's DNA — that at Hautlence, the point is the machine, not the minutes.

The brand fell quiet at the onset of COVID in 2020 and remained dormant for two years while MELB reflected on what Hautlence's future should be. The relaunch came in September 2022 under new brand manager Samuel Hoffmann, with a refined strategy and two new collections: the Linear Series and the Vagabonde, both presenting time through unconventional display architectures. The HLXX (2024, 20 pieces) marked the 20th anniversary with a return to the original HL01 concept in a refined, more compact titanium case with an integrated interchangeable bracelet.

At Watches & Wonders 2026, Hautlence unveiled two significant new models. The Kubera Series 1 — named for the Indian god of wealth and underground treasures — is a radical departure from the rectangular TV-shaped cases that had defined the brand: an eight-sided case with a stepped, tiered profile evoking a miniature pyramid, 36mm × 43.8mm × 11.3mm in stainless steel with an integrated tapered bracelet. Time is displayed without hands: jumping hours appear in an octagonal window at noon with a turquoise background, and a round turquoise cursor glides around the periphery of the dial on a hidden track for the minutes. The movement combines a La Joux-Perret automatic base with an Agenhor-developed jumping hours and peripheral minutes module (28,800 A/h, 70-hour power reserve, 244 components, CHF 35,600). The Retrovision 64 — a tribute to the iconic year of the trichromatist television — is a flying tourbillon developed in partnership with Agenhor, housed in the TV-shaped case and presented with a dial inspired by the phosphorescent screen of an analogue television set. Today Hautlence produces approximately 200 pieces per year, with nine calibres designed and developed in-house alongside external movement partnerships for selected collections.