Vanguart

Vanguart — a portmanteau of 'vanguard' and 'art' — is one of the most technically audacious independent watch brands to emerge in recent years, founded in 2017 by a quartet of complementary talents who met through their time at Audemars Piguet Renaud & Papi (APRP): CEO Axel Leuenberger, who served as a mechanical designer in APRP's R&D department and worked directly as an assistant to Giulio Papi; Chief Technical Officer Jérémy Freléchox, who spent fifteen years at APRP rising to Head of Movement Creation Projects and a further six years at Girard-Perregaux; Creative Director Thierry Fischer, a designer whose past clients include Audemars Piguet, who Leuenberger and Freléchox encountered while APRP was working with Fischer's design studio on a project; and Chairman Mehmet Korutürk, who came to horology through private equity and brings financial and business leadership. The APRP lineage matters: that workshop is widely considered one of the most sophisticated movement manufacturing environments in the world, developing haute complication modules for AP, Chanel, Richard Mille, and others, and producing a generation of watchmakers whose ambitions expanded beyond their employer. Vanguart spent five years — including two additional years caused by COVID — developing its first watch before unveiling it publicly in 2021.

The Black Hole Tourbillon is the debut and signature creation, and it announced Vanguart's intentions without ambiguity: a watch that attempts, in mechanical and aesthetic form, to represent a black hole. The case is an exoskeleton — 45mm diagonal, 15.75mm height — whose sweeping organic curves appear grown rather than machined, with no visible screws or joints interrupting the silhouette. Thierry Fischer describes it as 'complex geometries conveyed with grace and fluidity.' Available in grade 5 titanium (80g) or 18k rose gold (173g), with sapphire crystals front and back and quick-release strap buttons on the caseback. The dial is a concentric three-tier automaton system in grade 5 titanium with anthracite PVD — three co-axial, concave, rotating discs whose curvature was designed to evoke the gravitational waves and the curvature of the spacetime continuum. From the periphery inward, the discs display hours, tenths of minutes, and minutes — rotating either clockwise or counterclockwise depending on the direction of time movement, with each disc taking between 200 and 500 milliseconds to change, creating a mesmerising, semi-instantaneous animated display.

At the centre, elevated above everything and appearing to float, is the one-minute flying tourbillon cage: 88 components, 12.55mm diameter, weighing 0.225 grams. A vertical power reserve gauge sits at 9 o'clock. The time-setting system replaces the conventional crown with a joystick: the lower crown allows time to advance or reverse with minimal pressure, and can be held in position to run time continuously forward or backward, with the disc rotating in real time; the upper crown advances the hour disc in one-hour increments. At the heart is the in-house hand-wound Calibre T-1701: 775 components, mainplate and bridges entirely in grade 5 titanium, 3Hz flying tourbillon with free-sprung balance and variable inertia, 42-hour power reserve, finished with microblasted, satin, block-polished, and hand-bevelled surfaces. Current Black Hole references include the Black Hole Arabic Numerals (titanium, CHF 355,000) with Eastern Arabic numerals and the Black Hole Rose Gold (18k rose gold, CHF 410,000) with Western Arabic numerals and warm gold and silver PVD movement accents — both launched at Dubai Watch Week 2025.

The Orb, unveiled in 2024, is Vanguart's second creation and in many respects its most refined. SJX Watches described the Orb's calibre as 'one of the most intriguing recent calibres.' Where the Black Hole is architectural and dramatic, the Orb prioritises symmetry, balance, and the pleasure of discovery. The case is entirely circular — 41mm diameter, 10.5mm height, no lugs — made entirely from titanium in multiple sections that allow different textures and colours; the rubber strap integrates ergonomically, offering multiple angle options for individual wrist fit. The movement is fully open-worked, almost perfectly symmetrical on both front and back, with a newly developed flying tourbillon. The defining technical innovation is the winding-function selector: a single crown mechanism allows the wearer to toggle between manual and automatic winding modes. In automatic mode, a 2mm diamond-set orbital mass — mounted on a sloped, PVD-coated titanium track — animates into motion, gliding weightlessly around the movement's periphery like a moon orbiting a planet, visible from the front as a kinetic performance. In manual mode, the orbital mass locks into place and becomes invisible in plain sight. This duality — the watch literally changing its character at the turn of a crown — is as philosophical as it is mechanical. Time and Tide described Vanguart's approach as 'multidimensional watchmaking'; Highsnobiety praised 'sci-fi aesthetics and mechanical mastery'; and the Black Hole Tourbillon was named one of the 14 most unforgettable watches of the year by GQ Australia. The Orb was spotted on Ed Sheeran's wrist during a concert in Germany, widening the brand's audience beyond the collector world into the broader cultural conversation about independent watchmaking.