Vincent Deprez

Vincent Deprez is a French watchmaker living near Geneva whose path into the craft began at an unusually young age even by the standards of an industry that prizes early starts. His desire to become a watchmaker formed at twelve; at fourteen, a school work experience week at Vacheron Constantin confirmed the direction; and at fifteen he began a full watchmaking apprenticeship there. He spent the next ten years at Vacheron Constantin working across restoration, regulation, assembly, and ultra-thin watches — a curriculum spanning some of the most technically demanding and historically significant work in Swiss watchmaking. He then joined Patek Philippe, working in their restoration department. The desire to build his own watch had been growing throughout those years, and in 2017 he left Patek Philippe, set up his own atelier, and turned his attention to making a tourbillon entirely by hand using traditional tools — the way the great watchmakers of the nineteenth century would have made one.

The result, the Tourbillon Classique Souscription Edition, is among the most hand-made watches produced by any independent working today. Vincent Deprez makes the movement components himself — including the tourbillon cage — as well as the 316L stainless steel case, machined from a blank, and the oven-fired enamel subdials, which he fires entirely himself using traditional tools and machines. The only components not made by Deprez are the strap and buckle, hands, jewels, mainspring, balance spring, balance wheel, sapphire crystals, mainspring barrel, and 90° gearing in the winding mechanism.

The movement is an original Deprez design: a one-minute tourbillon running at 2.5Hz (18,000 vph) with a Breguet overcoil balance spring, 15 jewels, a 52-hour power reserve, and a 12.6mm tourbillon cage suspended beneath a large hand-polished bridge of 22.8mm. The dial side is dominated by the tourbillon — Vincent deliberately placed hours and minutes on a small 18mm oven-fired enamel subdial (available in dark blue or cream) so as to expose as much as possible of the visible main plate and the winding and setting mechanism; the main plate carries the traditional frosted finish historically used on the finest pocket watches and early wristwatches. The caseback reveals the movement's reverse — bridges with that same frosted finish, hand-polished anglage with sharp internal angles, hand-polished jewel countersinks and screw heads, and a concealed spring barrel click that follows the curve of the numbered edition disk. The case measures 39mm in diameter and 11.3mm in height, hand-polished, with the backplate set flush to preserve the slim profile, and water-resistant to 30 metres. Presented in a walnut case, limited to 10 pieces in the Souscription Edition (sold out) and 20 pieces in total.

Deprez has since expanded the Tourbillon Classique family with the Scientific Tourbillon, which retains the same hand-built movement architecture but adopts a more contemporary, instrument-inspired aesthetic: a Grand Feu enamel time dial at 12 o'clock, fired by Deprez himself through multiple passes to a deep midnight blue, sits behind a mirror-polished applied steel chapter ring with a precise minute track, while the case gains a Grade 5 titanium caseback integrated directly into the case middle and secured through the lugs. Limited to ten pieces, the Scientific Tourbillon brings the total Tourbillon Classique series to twenty watches — exactly the ceiling Deprez set for himself from the beginning. Visitors to his workshop in Carouges, a quiet commune some forty minutes outside Geneva, describe him decorating tourbillon bridges by hand for hours at a stretch, often losing track of time so completely that he looks up to find the light has gone and he's forgotten to eat — a fitting image for a watchmaker whose entire philosophy is built on slowing down. Collectors and reviewers have repeatedly placed his work in conversation with Greubel Forsey and F.P. Journe's earliest tourbillons, remarkable company for a watchmaker not yet a decade into his own name — proof that ten years spent absorbing Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe's restoration disciplines translated directly into one of the most complete hand-made debuts independent watchmaking has seen in years.