Midnight Heure d’ici & Heure d’ailleurs Watch

POETRY OF THE HEAVENS

Watches and Wonders 2026

For more than a century, Van Cleef & Arpels has pursued the dream of living in time with the cosmos. Awed by the spectacle of the stars and the heavens, the Maison pays tribute to celestial wonders through creations that express the full scope of its expertise. As of 1929, it designed a pocket watch fitted with a complication showing phases of the Moon. In the 1950s, Van Cleef & Arpels once again turned its gaze to the night sky, especially with the Meteor secret watch.

This year, the Maison is observing the Moon’s subtle variations through a new Poetic Complications timepiece. The hours of Poetic Astronomy tick by in harmony from one time zone to the next, within an elegant setting highlighting the art of enamel. Meanwhile, Van Cleef & Arpels’ jewels that tell time interpret the boundless depth of the sky in rare materials. Finally, the Extraordinary Dials collection welcomes two new watches—legendary tales of love set against a celestial backdrop.

"Watches and Wonders 2026 gives us the opportunity to again showcase our Poetic Complications collection. Born in 2006 with the Lady Arpels Centenaire watch and its Quantième de Saison movement, this assortment instills emotion thanks to the confluence of watchmaking expertise and a narrative vision of passing time. Over the years, these creations have become iconic embodiments of the Poetry of Time dear to Van Cleef & Arpels. This conception is further enriched today with a new and enchanting chapter."

Midnight Heure d’ici & Heure d’ailleurs

Featuring a dual-time zone movement, the Midnight Heure d’ici & Heure d’ailleurs watch offers a refined and poetic interpretation of time in two different corners of the planet. Every glance at the dial becomes a boundless invitation to wander, a window open onto the world.

The design of the 38-mm Midnight case accentuates the harmonious balance between the polished, satiny rose gold of the case and hour markings, and the subtle tones of the embossed enamel making up the dial, its brown nuances taking on warm or cold accents depending on the light. The dial presents a guilloché aesthetic radiating out from a piqué motif recalling the Van Cleef & Arpels hallmark. Pure lines resonate with the asymmetry of the decor, a paragon of the Maison’s style, in which the flowing letters spelling out the name of the piece pay tribute to the poetry expressed in the words. The back of the case illustrates an engraved Moon basking in the glow of a guilloché Sun.

This Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight case houses an automatic mechanism, entirely redevelopped with a 65h power reserve, to display jumping hours alongside retrograde minutes. The Heure d’ici—the baseline hour presented in the upper window—and the Heure d’ailleurs, the hour displayed in the second time zone window located on the bottom of the dial, advance simultaneously thanks to two sector gears that synchronize the two discs and the retrograde minute hand. Once the hand reaches 60 minutes on the graduated scale, it returns to its initial position just as the hour display jumps forward. So begins a new cycle, announcing a new journey. To ensure easy operation, a single crown serves at once for winding the movement and setting the hour for the two time zones, as well as the minutes.

Enamel: a reinvented art form

To bedeck the Midnight Heure d’ici & Heure d’ailleurs watch in a singular hue, Van Cleef & Arpels turned to the craftsmen in its enamel workshop in Geneva. The experts began by considering the optical properties of selected precious stones such as rubies, which exhibit cool undertones despite their warm color. Following a long series of tests, they managed to replicate this dichroism in an enamel tinged with a dense, deep amber-brown hue. Its nuances shift with the light, reflected thanks to a mirror-polished gold background that heightens reflections within the dial.

This first daunting challenge went along with the delicate task of imprinting a piqué motif in the enamel—an allusion to the Maison’s hallmark—as well as a guilloché design radiating out to the rim. Achieving a harmonious interplay between the two decors called for an enamel displaying two distinct color intensities, as the thickness of the coat affects both its hue and “chatoyancy,” i.e. the behavior of light within the material. To create the relief motifs, the Van Cleef & Arpels enamelers drew inspiration from glassblowing techniques, adapted for watchmaking tools. The enamel was first worked at low temperature (under 500 °C) for more than 30 hours, to ensure uniform color distribution. Two subsequent firings at high and very high temperatures—over 1,000°C—served to eliminate bubbles and prepare the material for shaping, carried out with a die applied to the enamel by hand. One last passage in the kiln, and the final shaping stage could begin.

"The main challenge was to shape the material without weakening or deforming it. By combining the best of both crafts—glass-making and enamel—we were able to create extremely fine and sturdy enamels. I am particularly moved by the color and textures we developed. I love seeing how they behave according to the lighting conditions and the medium used. This creation embodies the quality of human artistry."

Head of Development for Artistic Crafts, Enamel Research and Development in the Watchmaking Workshops