Magazine Feature Out Of The Blue

This story was originally published in Hodinkee Australia & New Zealand Volume 1. 

Get your copy here. 

For more than a century, Chanel has been a house of two colours: black and white. This was the sparse palette that Gabrielle Chanel drew from the habits of the Aubazine convent where she was raised, inspiring her to share this vision with countless millions by way of the little black dress, the white camellia, and the bottle of No. 5. When the Maison finally dipped its toe into the world of watchmaking back in the year 2000 with the J12, it honoured that same discipline: black ceramic, then white, and for a quarter of a century, that was it. This commitment was a subtle reminder that loving Chanel has always meant embracing a certain level of refusal, stemming from the conviction that, if you truly understand both potential and limitation, two colours are all you need. 

This is what makes the J12 Bleu such a whispering wonder. Introduced to mark the 25th anniversary of the collection, it’s the first time the J12’s high-tech ceramic has been rendered in any colour at all, unveiled as a shade of intense, matte, almost oceanic blue that took Chanel half a decade to perfect. This isn’t a seasonal colourway or a marketing flourish; it’s a genuine departure from one of the most disciplined visual languages in fashion, and after a quarter of a century of consideration, it’s one that tells you how seriously Chanel takes the business of breaking its own rules.

Restraint is exactly what first strikes – and impresses – you when handling the collection. If Chanel had shouted from the rooftops with its first coloured watch, everyone would have listened. But the power of Chanel is the wisdom that raised voices are rarely worth listening to. This is evident down to the choice of cut for the stones in the J12 Bleu, with baguette-cut sapphires selected for the hour markers and bezels over brilliant-cut alternatives, emphasising colour over sparkle. The result is a collection that’s monochrome in an important new way: the same tonal purity and iron-fisted restraint that have always governed Chanel’s visual language, this time transposed from black to blue.

Despite how notable the design decisions of the J12 Bleu are, to see it purely through this lens is to miss an equally interesting story, which is that Chanel has, over the past decade, become a serious watchmaker. The evidence isn’t only on the dial; it’s inside the case and on the company’s balance sheet. Chanel took a 20 per cent stake in the independent movement genius Romain Gauthier back in 2011, and in 2018, it quietly acquired a minority holding in F.P. Journe, one of the most revered living watchmakers. A year later, it invested in MB&F, horology’s most playful and inventive independent, while also purchasing a stake in Kenissi, the Tudor-founded movement manufacture that supplies the automatic calibres – the 12.1 in the 38mm, the 12.2 in the 33mm – ticking away beneath those blue dials.

The apex of this quiet campaign is the J12 Bleu Diamond Tourbillon that sits at the top of the Bleu collection, arriving as a limited edition of 55 pieces, with a bezel set with 34 baguette-cut blue sapphires and a manually wound Calibre 5 flying tourbillon, exposed through a cut-out at six o'clock with a single solitaire diamond floating at the centre of the cage. The Calibre 5 is Chanel’s first in-house flying tourbillon, conceived in Paris and built at the house’s manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, further showcasing its watchmaking ambitions and language of restraint. This is once again evident in the smallest of details, like the cut of the diamonds, this time chosen to maximise flashes of light, not colour, as movement is guaranteed both from the tourbillon’s rotation and the winding of the crown.

There’s a broader shift that sits underneath this, too. The J12 was always designed to be universally worn, but the deep navy of the J12 Bleu speaks to a certain kind of male collector who might have never previously walked into a Chanel boutique – the kind of man who values mechanics just as much as design and understands the significance of Chanel embracing colour.

The camellia and the quilted flap will always be what most people picture when they hear the name, but the J12 Bleu is a reminder that somewhere in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Chanel has been building something more patient and more technical than its broader reputation would suggest. And that, occasionally, the most radical thing a legend built on black and white can do is, at last, turn to blue.

For more on the Chanel J12 Bleu, click here. 

Photography: Antoni Ciufo
Styling: Malaika Crawford
Hair: Kyoko Kishita @ Home Agency
Makeup: Sacha Giraudeau @ Home Agency
Manicure: Jessica Trochut
Casting Director: Aymeric @ AYMCASTING
Models: Linda Straupmane @ NEXT; Abraham Ajoung @ Clear Management

Originally published in Hodinkee Magazine, Volume 14. Get your copy here.