Théo Auffret
Théo Auffret was born in 1995 in Poissy, on the outskirts of Paris, and discovered watchmaking by chance — his original career intention was engineering, but just before the Baccalaureate he visited a watch boutique near his hometown and asked if he could see the workshop of the old watchmaker inside. Turned away the first time, he asked again and again until persistence earned him entry. That encounter changed his direction. He apprenticed first with Denis Corpechot, a Paris-based clock and watch restorer, for two years — learning the fundamentals of restoration, the handling of antique movements, and the deep physical intuition that traditional repair work builds in a watchmaker's hands. He then pursued a longer and more formative three-year apprenticeship with Jean-Baptiste Viot, the singular Parisian independent whose handmade Chronomètre à Paris had already established the highest standard for French wristwatch making since Breguet. During those three years, Auffret worked alongside Viot on the last three pieces of his client backlog — developing skills in movement construction, traditional surface finishing, and the particular finishing technique of charbonnage (a charcoal-based frosting process that creates a soft, warm, hazy surface — a hallmark of both Viot and Auffret's work).
His own Tourbillon à Paris prototype took shape in Viot's workshop, designed entirely on pen and paper, with almost every component — including the silver case — hand-made by Auffret himself; the barrel, pinions, and a few wheels were drawn from a Peseux 260, and the escapement from a vintage Jaeger calibre. His final stop was a stint at Ateliers 7h38 with Luca Soprana in Switzerland — a complications workshop known for its work with Jacob & Co — where Auffret gained experience in prototyping and high-precision component work.
He is also a former pupil of Florent Lecomte at Lycée Edgar Faure, as part of the tight-knit watchmaking community the school has produced across the generations.
In April 2018, Auffret was named one of three winners of the F.P. Journe Young Talent Competition — sharing the prize with Rémy Cools, who went on to win the GPHG Horological Revelation in 2024 — and the Tourbillon à Paris immediately attracted international attention. The watch is not a skeleton: it has no traditional dial, instead showcasing both sides of the movement simultaneously through its open architecture. A regulator-style layout separates the hours, minutes, and seconds onto individual displays; a one-minute tourbillon sits at the base; exposed mainspring barrels are visible on the dial side; a three-dimensional movement architecture of shaped bridges and platforms references the aesthetic of 18th and 19th-century French pocket watches and observatory clocks, while the charbonnage finishing gives every surface a luminous warmth entirely unlike the more clinical Côtes de Genève conventions of Swiss manufacture. The souscription was originally planned for 20 pieces at 3–5 watches per year; in practice it ran to 15 pieces total (including the prototype, which was later refinished and sold as piece No. 00) before Auffret closed the series in 2023 to move forward.
The Tourbillon à Paris was nominated for the GPHG in 2020 in the Chronometry category. The Tourbillon Grand Sport followed as the final souscription watches — a more contemporary interpretation drawing direct inspiration from the Richard Mille RM001, which Auffret considers a design game-changer: an open-worked movement in a titanium case with an integrated strap, a central hour and minute display, and a torque indicator showing live mainspring tension. It was nominated for the GPHG Tourbillon Prize in 2021. For Only Watch 2023/24 — the 10th edition of the biennial charity auction — Auffret collaborated with Gaël Petermann and Florian Bédat of Petermann Bédat to create the Chronomètre d'Observatoire: a unique piece blending Petermann Bédat's movement architecture and swan-neck regulator with Auffret's signature click system and charbonnage bridge finishing. The watch toured the world in September 2023 and was eventually sold at the delayed auction in 2024 for CHF 240,000.
Today Auffret operates from a new atelier at 10 Place des Victoires in central Paris — only a few streets from the original Abraham-Louis Breguet workshop on Rue Saint-Honoré, a proximity that is both symbolic and deliberate for a watchmaker who has made the revival of Parisian haute horlogerie his personal mission. The title 'Horloger Constructeur' — meaning a watchmaker who both designs and builds movements from conception — has been applied to his work by the industry. While French watchmakers of his generation have mostly followed the well-trodden path to Switzerland (Journe, Flageollet, Halter), Auffret chose to remain in Paris and build his practice there — a genuine act of cultural and horological conviction. His team has grown to include Eve Albanesi (a fellow Lycée Edgar Faure Morteau alumna), Nathan Tremion, Lubin, and Barbara. The current collection is structured across two lines. Grande Mesure covers watches 38mm and above with open-worked architecture continuing the Tourbillon à Paris lineage; Petite Mesure is for 36mm watches with closed dials. The Giverny 'Blue Train' (2025) is the first Petite Mesure release: a 36mm three-hand watch limited to 10 pieces per year, sharing the design DNA of the Tourbillon à Paris in a more accessible format and bearing the same charbonnage finishing. It was named a semi-finalist for the 2025–26 Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives. Alongside Auffret Paris, Théo co-founded SpaceOne — a futuristic watchmaking project sharing the same workshop and producing its own independently conceived watches — as a creative counterpart to his historical and classical work. His ambition is for Paris to be recognised again as the world centre of haute horlogerie it once was.