The Zenith El Primero Elite
With its revolutionary new mechanism, Zenith has challenged a 300-year-old watchmaking standard. Rachael Taylor meets the innovator behind the brand
In the Jura mountains, a high-altitude stretch of Switzerland deeply embedded in watchmaking heritage, Julien Tornare is operating a start-up. A 153-year-old start-up. Or at least that?s the way the Zenith chief executive views his leadership of this watch brand in flux.
The past couple of years have been stacked with innovation for Zenith. At global watch fair Baselworld in 2017, the maison delivered a reboot of the quite aptly named Defy collection that has shaken up not only its own offering, but the watchmaking status quo. The star of that first new wave was the Defy El Primero 21, a high-beat chronograph that can offer timing accuracy to 1/100th of a second, should you need to be absolutely sure which of your colleagues can complete the morning coffee run the swiftest. Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine
The Defy Classic with a blue alligator leather strap
Six months later came the really big news. Defy Lab, an experimental line of watches powered by silicone oscillators, not metal, had the watch community ready to self-combust. This was the first time that someone ? Guy Sémon, a physicist and former French navy pilot, who is now the general director of Zenith?s sister brand TAG Heuer, to be exact ? had successfully challenged the 300-year-old balance spring method developed by D...