TRILOBE – Une Folle Soirée Grail Watch 3 “Wild Night” Titanium Edition 2022Trilobe for Grail Watch
“Imagine the three primary time-telling disks first brought to life
in Les Matinaux now powered by an alien force field, so that they
levitate off the dial and are retained only by the canopy of domed
sapphire crystal.” Wei Koh
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO An exclusive partnership
Introducing Une
Folle Soirée, our limited edition in collaboration with Grail Watch.
This piece combines the artistic expressiveness of Trilobe with the
luminous signature of Wei Koh, founder of Revolution, Grail Watch and
The Rake. The 25 numbered pieces of this edition were sold out within
minutes, following its launch on the Grail Watch platform on Monday,
November 19th.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Massonneau’s
design for Grail Watch has given birth to the Une Folle Soirée, a
spectacular timepiece with one of the most distinctive luminous
signatures ever seen on a watchClick, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
I
often use the following analogy when describing the evolution of the
watch from a precision device to an object whose primary function is to
give its wearer emotion: Previous to the Quartz Crisis, a watch’s
primary purpose was to give time as accurately as possible. In this
history of watchmaking, accuracy was prized above all else because it
was fundamental to the global expansion of European colonies, key to the
efficient and safe running of America’s railway system, and even
ensured the safe return of the astronauts of Apollo 13 when all their
electronic systems failed onboard their spacecraft. Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
The
story of
John Harrison and the creation of the world’s first marine
chronometer — a watch so accurate that it allowed sailors to correctly
ascertain longitude while at sea — is one of the most heroic fables in
human history. The desire to be more accurate has been behind the most
significant horological milestones, from
Christiaan Huygens’ invention
of the balance wheel to
Breguet’s tourbillon patented in
1801, to
Harrison’s creation of the remontoir d’egalité. Accordingly, watch
brands would do battle even into the late
1960s at the observatory
trials of Neuchâtel, besting each other by mere fractions of a second to
lay claim to the title of the most accurate brand in the world.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
John
Harrison’s prize-winning H4, the first true marine chronometer and one
of the most important timekeepers ever made (Image: Royal Museums
Greenwich)
But
then the Quartz Crisis came, and the world was flooded with inexpensive
hyper accurate watches with electronic oscillators that vibrated at a
staggering 32.768kHz. Instantly, accuracy was totally democratized and
the mechanical watch lost its primary raison d'être. Interestingly, a
similar thing happened in the art world in the 19th century with the
invention of the camera. Previous to the camera, the value of an artist
and his work was based on how well he or she could portray reality. Of
course, this could be accomplished with the extraordinary emotional
expressiveness of Michelangelo and Bernini, or with the transcendent use
of color as in the case of Titian, or the subtly detailed nuances of
Rembrandt. In general, the lifelike replication of native reality was
the yardstick by which artists were judged. But once the camera
democratized reality, the first significant artistic movement to emerge
was Impressionism, which was about the conveyance of emotion and the
sublimation of reality as refracted through the eye of the artist.
Grail Watch 3: Trilobe Une Folle Soirée "Wild Night"
Similarly,
when mechanical watchmaking started to regain traction in the late ’80s
and ’90s, the function of the watch had shifted. Its primary purpose
was no longer to give time with greatest accuracy, but to endow its
owner with emotion. Towards the end of the ’90s, several rebellious
watchmakers set out to transform time telling into a purely expressive
artistic language. Chief amongst these were Urwerk, created in 1997 by
Felix and Thomas Baumgartner and Martin Frei, and Ulysse Nardin which,
with the Freak launched in 2001, transformed time telling into a type of
mobile sculpture or kinetic art. In 2005, Max Büsser created MB&F, a
brand with a wonderfully inventive take on time-telling art. And while
many different brands since then have tried to capitalize on this type
of watchmaking, not many have endured. Even fewer new brands have made a
distinct impression on this space with any true lasting effect and
authentic originality in voice. Indeed, in the last decade and a half,
to my mind, it is only Benoît Mintiens with his extraordinary brand
Ressence born in 2010 and Gautier Massonneau with his brand Trilobe
created in 2018 that truly resonate today.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Gautier Massonneau
and Trilobe’s story is an interesting one. Like Mintiens, he doesn’t
come from the watch world at all. He grew up amongst the worlds of
architecture and interior design as these were his parents’ métiers. But
when he came of age, Massonneau’s instinct was to pursue a career in
finance at the French bank Natixis. This period of his twenties was
characterized by an intellectual restlessness that had him seeking to do
more. When it came time to purchase his first serious watch, he found
himself frustrated. Between rupture and continuity, he aspires to create
a watch that is different yet timeless and classic in its design. The
Trilobe watch was born from the desire to explore the field of
possibilities in the watchmaking industry.
He recalls, “For me, there was always something
wonderfully compelling about watches like A. Lange & Söhne’s
Zeitwerk, which features a jumping digital display for time. I loved how
it took a radical departure from the sometimes rigidly prescriptive
iconography of a traditional watch dial. I also loved François-Paul
Journe’s Vagabondage as a timepiece that transformed civil time into
artistic expression. But, of course, all of these watches were far out
of reach for me financially. The more I thought about it, the more I
became obsessed with creating my own personal interpretation for time
telling.”
Fortunately,
Massonneau proved to be a prodigious autodidact with the capacity to
learn at an accelerated pace as he devoured articles on watchmaking and,
in particular, timepieces that straddled the boundary between objet
d’art and precision instrument. At night, before he went to sleep, a
vision grew with increasing clarity and intensity. Massonneau saw time
liberated from traditional hands. Instead, he envisioned disks or rings,
three in total — one each for the hours, minutes and seconds, each
rotating counterclockwise with fixed indicators tracking their course.
Says Massonneau, “Traditional watches display time in a way that is
ordered and empirical, as if everything is compartmentalized and
structured. I wanted to create a watch that liberated time from this
cage, and that allowed you to revel in time as a pure pleasure.” With
this three-part system for telling time in mind, a name was also born:
“Trilobe,” with a logo in the shape of a distinct trefoil, a universal
and timeless architecture symbol.
As it happened,
Massonneau met the person who would have a major hand in the realization
of his dream — Volcy Bloch. Massonneau understood that to create his
brand he would need a strong head of communications and offered the role
to Bloch. She says, “I had worked for 20 years in a big group [Bloch
worked for perfume and cosmetics brand Marionnaud, owned by the
A.S. Watson Group and, prior to that, was with Piaget] and felt it was
time for a change, but I was struck by Gautier’s intelligence,
enthusiasm, passion and inventiveness.”
Next, Massonneau had to
find someone who could help bring his vision to life. For this, he had
to follow the footsteps of the Huguenots and make a sojourn over the
Alps to his neighboring country. His pilgrimage to Switzerland
eventually brought him to Chronode, the workshop of the talented
Jean-François Mojon. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because he’s
the man behind Max Büsser’s Legacy Machine No. 1. He also co-created the
detent escapement watch for Urban Jürgensen, together with his friend
Kari Voutilainen, and is the designer of Harry Winston’s Opus X. In
recent years, Mojon has been behind the incredible split seconds
chronograph movement used by Czapek for its Antarctique Rattrapante.
Together, they sat down and discussed Massonneau’s idea. What was meant
to be a 30-minute meeting turned into a five-hour conversation. “I
missed my flight home,” recalls Massonneau with a laugh.
Les Matinaux and Nuit Fantastique
Mojon
loved Massonneau’s vision for three counterclockwise rotating rings
with fixed indicators. After initial development with Mojon, Massonneau
also worked on further development of his base caliber, the X-Centric,
with Cercle des Horlogers, one of the major rising stars in the world of
complication specialists. This movement, whose architecture is stunning
to behold, features an ultra efficient tungsten carbide micro-rotor. It
also features a 4Hz vibrational speed with torque from the barrel
optimized to drive the disks that are at the core of Massonneau’s
expressionist time-telling vision.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Trilobe’s X-Centric caliber defies the codes of traditional watchmaking with its multi-level concentric ring concept
The other thing that was important to
Massonneau was that every aspect of his watch was finished to a high
degree. Finally, for him, the size of his watches was of critical
importance. He explains, “No matter what, I absolutely did not want to
create something larger than 41mm. I felt that we had very much embraced
a renewed era of classic proportions and sizes, and that many of the
more adventurous watches today are simply too large for current tastes. I
wanted my watches to be elegant.”
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Trilobe’s first watch, Les Matinaux, in sunray silver
He
continues, “Our first watch I named Les Matinaux after a book of poetry
by René Char. In English, this means ‘The Dawn Breakers,’ which I
thought would be a great name for a first watch. Char is an incredible
character, a hero of the French Resistance and a key figure of the
Surrealist movement, and possibly the most important French poet since
Rimbaud. His writing paves the way for hope and boldness.”
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Refined in its
simplicity, Les Matinaux is a poetic take on horology that proclaims
Trilobe’s philosophy of always going forward with hope and boldness
Says
Bloch, “We presented Les Matinaux in December 2018 at our official
launch at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, and we were very
inspired by the positive feedback we received. People loved that we
defined a new way to tell time in a poetic and liberating way. But they
also liked the size of the watch at 40mm and the quality that we
insisted on.”
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Says Massonneau, “It was important that
people felt we had created a watch with real integrity and authenticity,
beyond it being fun and different. On the dial of Les Matinaux, we see
three counterclockwise rotating rings. At the very perimeter, we have
the ring for the hours. Next, and oriented asymmetrically to the bottom
left, we have the ring for the minutes. And finally, all the way to the
interior, we find the skeletonized disk for the seconds. Beside each of
these disks is a trilobe that acts as the respective fixed marker.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO
“Things are not always what they appear to be… You may see a
dial, but the reality is much more complex, and this is how it works:
time is put in motion through three eccentric rings rotating
counterclockwise. This singular time display device, composed of five,
four or three parts depending on the collection, forges a technical bond
between the dial on the front and the X-Centric caliber on the back.
This is what makes the strength of Trilobe’s innovation: the dial is
intrinsic to the movement, which alone makes it possible to free time. Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
This movement can be viewed through the sapphire casebacks of Trilobe’s watches
“A
real technical challenge is in the equilibrium of forces, searching for
the perfect balance between the force of an unusually strong spring
barrel required to put the dial in motion, and the finesse of the
perfectly concentric, leveled lower rings engineered to guarantee their
smooth travel on the dial. With this dual complication, Trilobe extends
the boundaries of watchmaking and gives a new meaning to the traditional
decorative dial.”
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Nuit Fantastique, seen here in a sandy “Dune” dial, brings a pure and unadulterated time-telling experience
As
their watch continued to gain critical momentum and a cult following,
Trilobe launched their next timepiece in 2021. Says Massonneau, “In Nuit
Fantastique, which translates as Fantastic Night, I wanted to create a
watch with the same basic time-telling indicators, but now reduced to a
total purity and simplicity in expression. In this watch, everything is
ordered to align vertically — the Trilobe trefoil indicating the hours
is at 12 o’clock and the ‘trilobe’ that tells both the minutes and
seconds is displaced slightly to the left but is also vertically
oriented. To create a rich vintage themed element, we used frosting over
much of the surface area of the dial, and I really like the dynamic
tension this creates between the modern way of telling time contrasted
by this detail.”
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Nuit Fantastique Secret
Says
Bloch, “I think collectors and press were pleasantly surprised to see
how Gautier could extrapolate his design language into two complementary
but total distinct models. Les Matinaux is bold and exuberant, while
Nuit Fantastique is contemplative and charming.”
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
The
wildly original Une Folle Journée, presented at Watches and Wonders
2022, catapulted Trilobe to the realm of the horological heavyweightsClick, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Not
content to launch two equally appealing models, Massonneau decided to
add the secret dial subcategory to both watches. It is an invitation to
immortalize a precious moment in a poetic way. Each dial is personalized
and made bespoke with a map of the sky charting the stars from the day,
time and place that are dear to you. Massonneau has a watch customized
in this way for the moment he proposed to his wife. “For myself and an
increasing segment in watch collecting, the idea of personalizing a
watch in a really meaningful way, beyond simple engraving of initials or
a date, has become really appealing and I wanted to fulfill this
demand,” he explains. “For me, the fact that the meaning of the
custom-made sky is hidden in the stars and only known by the wearer
embodies this idea of luxury for oneself. An intimate piece with a
strong and emotional meaning that only resonates in the heart of the
wearer.”
Une Folle Journée
While
Les Matinaux and Nuit Fantastique established Trilobe as an exciting
young brand with bold ambitions and strong substance, their next watch
would transform them into one of the hottest names in modern
watchmaking. I remember visiting Massonneau and Bloch at their office in
Paris late last year. They showed me an early rendering of a watch that
would be called Une Folle Journée, or “A Crazy Day” in English. I
looked at them and replied, “This watch will change everything. It will
make you so insanely popular that you will struggle with supplying the
insurmountable demand for it and make you one of the most exciting
brands today.” Because what I saw was a watch of staggering beauty,
expressing a clearly articulated vision with a voice that was totally
unique. How can I describe Une Folle Journée? Imagine the three primary
time-telling disks of Les Matinaux now powered by an alien force field,
so that they levitate off the dial and are retained only by the canopy
of domed sapphire crystal. Une Folle Journée takes the language of
Trilobe and explodes it into the third dimension and beyond.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Grail Watch 3:
Trilobe Une Folle Soirée "Wild Night"; Achieved through a clever play on
geartrain arrangement, the hours, minutes and seconds are displayed on
three concentric rings that rotate counterclockwise on different levels
and are indicated by a single, fixed pointer at six o’clock. The time is
6 hours 28 minutes and 24 seconds; Developed in partnership with Le
Cercle des Horlogers, the creatively constructed movement dubbed the
X-Centric is wound by a micro-rotor visible through the sapphire case
back. Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO
In
1959, Miles Davis released his sixth album with Columbia Records,
between Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain. Named Kind of Blue, it was
a work of immense mastery and originality — the modal approach to jazz
played within a certain scale instead of a fixed sequence to allow for
greater improvisation. Kind of Blue was the greatest achievement of
modal jazz of all time, improvising on a seven-note sequence to create a
Valhalla of sonic beauty. In the words of the BBC’s Chris Jones, “Quite
simply, the sonic space it creates sounds like the coolest place on the
planet.” I will now co-opt Jones’ statement to say, “Une Folle Journée
and the visual effect it creates looks like the coolest place on the
planet” — that’s how enamored I am with the watch.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Says
Massonneau,
“The watch follows our initial concept but now fully engaged
in three dimensions. The outer hour ring, the minute ring and the inner
most seconds ring are all crafted from titanium to make them all as
light as possible. Because they are now all elevated on pillars to rise
above the surface of the baseplate at increasing heights, the effect is
that of a dome.” Indeed,
Massonneau had to find a special Japanese
supplier for the domed sapphire, which is then finished in Switzerland
to contain the incredible amphitheater and mechanical microcosm within.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Grail
Watch 3: Trilobe Une Folle Soirée "Wild Night"; The titanium rings are
elevated by pillars, creating significant dimension that is topped off
by a prominently domed sapphire crystal
Unleashed
at the 2022 Watches and Wonders, the first proper physical watch fair
since the onset of the pandemic, it is fair to say that Une Folle
Journée blew the roof off Geneva’s Palexpo. Crowds of people constantly
surrounded Trilobe’s small booth situated at the fair’s Carré des
Horlogers. And it was amazing to see my friend, industry legend,
ex-Piaget boss and, I presume, Trilobe shareholder, Philippe
Léopold-Metzger, showing the watch to retailers and press alike, all of
whom were jostling for space to set their eyes on this incredible
timepiece. The energy at this booth was simply electric. Said Massonneau
then with a content but exhausted visage on the last day of the fair,
“The response has been beyond our wildest dreams.”
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Bloch
added,
“Our biggest challenge will be anticipating how to fulfil demand
in the best timing.” Now, understanding the insurmountable demand for
all Trilobe watches and, in particular, Une Folle Journée, the question
is, of course, how is it that Grail Watch was able to secure a 25-piece
limited edition based on this model?
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
Grail
Watch 3: Trilobe Une Folle Soirée "Wild Night"; Despite it being 40.5mm
in diameter with a thickness of 17.8mm, and aggressively domed, the
watch sits closely and comfortably on the wristThe
answer is simple. One year ago, the moment I set eyes on the rendering
of Une Folle Journée, I knew without hesitation that this watch would
radically change the fortunes of this already successful brand. That its
sheer beauty and originality, coupled with its wearability and
attention to detail, would make it one of the biggest hits of the year.
And I knew without an iota of doubt that I wanted to collaborate with
Massonneau and Bloch on a watch to celebrate their elevation to the
ranks of the horological heavyweights.
Une Folle Soirée
So
what is Une Folle Soirée and how does it differ from Une Folle Journée?
Translated into English, it means, “A Wild Night,” and is inspired by
the Van Morrison song of the same name. My first impression when setting
eyes on Une Folle Journée was of three UFOs in a coordinated flight
pattern landing on the surface of a planet. And I knew immediately that I
would love to see this featuring a maximum light show when the watch
was in an ambient or dark setting.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
The
generous application of Super-Luminova emphasizes the complex and
unusual dial architecture, offering one of the most immersive light
shows seen in a watch
Those
of you that have followed the development of Revolution and The Rake’s
limited edition watches know that the luminous signature of a watch, or
the pattern of light it emits in the dark, has been a long-term
obsession for me. This began with the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo “White
Light” with its fully luminous dial in 2019, which we followed up on
with a black ceramic model with an even more reactive dial named the
“Nuclear Option.” For our Zenith A3818 Revival “Airweight Cover Girl”
launched in 2020, to distinguish the new watch from the vintage models,
we made all the chronograph indications luminous. We then launched the
Bamford GMT watch in 2021 with a luminous Snoopy in “Joe Cool” guise
that came in a luminous doghouse. I also have the pleasure of owning the
first ever Cartier Crash made with a luminous dial. There have been
others that have played with this theme in their limited editions, but I
feel that we have focused on it the most consistently. So, to say
luminous signature is my thing is fair.
Click, to see the large size. ▶ BIG FOTO 
The three rings of the hours, minutes and seconds are tiered and fly
at a 10.2mm height, a true watchmaking prowess. Projected in space and
balanced by 9 pillars,
’s rings are each the result of a complex
assembly.
They fly in the air carrying with them the scales of
time: the largest ring for hours, the median one for minutes, the
smallest one for seconds.
The open dial enables to savour the
watchmaking craftsmanship of a Swiss Made calibre, without losing sight
of the rotating rings’ singularity.
This new creation showcases outstanding know-how. Two years of
research & development were required to achieve this true prowess at
the crossroads of High Watchmaking and High Jewellery.
