Rémy Cools
Rémy Cools is one of independent watchmaking's most striking young talents — a Frenchman who, at just 11 years old, visited the Manufacture Frédéric Piguet in the Vallée de Joux and assembled movement components for the first time, sparking an obsession that never let go. By 18 he had hand-built a tourbillon clock; by his own account, devouring watchmaking books and hunting vintage pieces at flea markets, he was chasing the specific magic of 18th- and 19th-century French watchmaking legends. He trained formally at the Lycée Edgar Faure in Morteau, restoring and repairing antique watches, marine chronometers, and clocks for collectors after school hours, and in 2018 — while still a student — won the prestigious F.P. Journe Young Talent Competition. In 2019, aged just 22, he set up his own independent workshop on the shores of Lake Annecy, roughly 50km from Geneva, guided by a personal motto, 'Evolve, Don't Repeat,' and a philosophy he calls Singularity: a commitment to handmade, restorable, enduring watchmaking inspired by the technical and decorative elegance of historic French horology, blended with modern technique.
His debut, the Tourbillon Souscription (2020), sold on a subscription basis only and found buyers among prestigious collectors worldwide — just nine pieces, each identifiable by its distinctive twin flip-up winding and setting keys set into the caseback rather than a conventional crown. Three years and considerable artistic maturation later came its successor, the Tourbillon Atelier (2023): smaller and thinner at 39mm × 12mm against the original's 40mm × 15mm, with a less prominent 3mm domed sapphire crystal and, for the first time, a traditionally positioned crown at 3 o'clock. Limited to 36 pieces in 950 platinum — offered with either yellow-gold or rhodium-plated movement finishing beneath a matching dial color — it retains the symmetrical layout and off-centred two-part dial of the original while elevating the finishing throughout: micro-blasted decoration, distinctive stepped bridges, and a fully visible movement through the sapphire caseback that critics called a genuine treat for the eyes.
Every component — every bridge, mainplate, wheel, hand, and hand-formed Breguet-curve balance spring — is designed and produced entirely in Cools' own workshop, with the stated ambition of pushing toward complete in-house autonomy over time. The Tourbillon Atelier's proprietary hand-wound caliber (235 components) drives a large 13.2mm one-minute tourbillon, entirely hand-finished, beating at 18,000vph (2.5Hz) through a Swiss anchor escapement for 55 hours of reserve, priced at EUR 159,000. Cools sums up his approach without apology: 'I am not a trend follower, I just do what I like, the way I like it and feel it' — a conviction that, in barely half a decade of independence, has already drawn comparisons to AHCI tourbillon specialists like Beat Haldiman and made him one of the most closely watched young names in independent horology.