How diamonds are reshaping luxury watch movements, from Chanel to Cartier
Luxury maisons including Van Cleef & Arpels and Jaeger-LeCoultre are going beyond bling, revolutionising horology with functional diamonds
In the decades that followed, diamond watches came to signal status and success, their popularity rising and falling alongside broader cultural trends. From the late 1980s onwards, they were embraced within hip-hop culture, where customisation became widespread. While diamonds remained a visible marker of luxury across these periods, they were rarely integrated into how a watch actually functioned. Today, however, advancements in gem cutting have made it possible to use diamonds more directly within watchmaking, with the stones integrated into the structure of watches as functional components.
Drawing on the house’s long-standing love affair with haute couture, the watch is designed to resemble a ribbon of gemstones draped around the wrist. Here, a 3.72-carat oval-cut diamond replaces the usual sapphire crystal over the dial, with the time read through the diamond’s natural transparency. Beneath the stone sits a hand-wound, mechanical movement, while around the dial, metal is largely hidden beneath snow-set diamonds and rows of emeralds and sapphires secured using the brand’s patented Mystery Set technique. This method, first introduced in 1933, relies on gold rails hidden beneath precisely cut stones, creating uninterrupted surfaces of colour with a finish often likened to polished velvet.
The diamond moves into the mechanism of a watch at Chanel. Also unveiled at Watches and Wonders last year, the J12 Bleu Diamond Tourbillon, a limited edition of the brand’s signature J12 model in a run of 55 pieces, features a 65-facet, solitaire-cut diamond – a cut chosen for its ability to maximise sparkle – set at the centre of the flying tourbillon cage. As the cage rotates, the stone moves with it as part of the rotating structure that carries the balance wheel and escapement, a mechanism designed to counter the effects of gravity on timekeeping.
The tourbillon sits within a 38mm blue ceramic case, a material long associated with the J12 line, while the bezel is set with matching blue baguette-cut sapphires. Beating within is Chanel’s in-house, manually wound Calibre 5 – developed to accommodate the diamond-set tourbillon cage, whose added mass and balance required careful engineering.
