When Romain Gauthier released his first titanium timepiece, the Prestige HMS Natural Titanium, in 2011, the reaction he received wasn’t quite what he was expecting.
“Collectors knew me as an exponent of traditional Vallée de Joux watchmaking, presented in precious metal cases,” he says. “When I unveiled the Prestige HMS Natural Titanium, people said: ‘Why" What are you doing combining your type of watchmaking with titanium"’ My response was: ‘Wait, bear with me on this one.'”
Romain Gauthier
It’s not as if titanium hadn’t been a prevalent material in the watch industry for decades. In the 1970s, Seiko introduced the first timepiece with a titanium caseback. In that same decade, Citizen launched a special edition of its first electronic model, the X8, in titanium. And in the ’80s, IWC collaborated with Porsche Design to release the first commercially-available watch with a case made entirely out of the ultra lightweight, high-resistance material. However, the focus during those early decades was almost entirely on sports models. For the most part, even going into the 2000s, the material had yet to be embraced as the material du jour for the Haute Horlogerie crowd. In the seven years since Gauthier debuted the Prestige HMS, those initial collectors and horological pundits have quieted down. Gauthier followed up the Prestige HMS by introducing his Logical One timepiece in both Natural Titanium and Bl...