Maurice Lacroix
Precision, Winter 2022
Maurice Lacroix might be among the big names in Swiss watchmaking, but it’s a relatively young one having only been founded in 1975 by Zürich-based Desco von Schulthess, a private label manufacturer that could trace its roots back to 1889.
From small beginnings during the 1970s, first selling watches in Austria before moving into Spain, Germany, then America and the Far East, Maurice Lacroix became an independent business in 2001.
Fifteen years ago it went upmarket with the introduction of movements made in-house, a development it celebrated by launching a model called the Mémoire 1 that was claimed to contain one of the most complicated mechanisms ever devised for a wristwatch.
Fitted with a minutes hand, a seconds hand and an hour disc, it was billed as the world’s first watch to have a ‘mechanical memory’ thanks to the fact that pressing a button within the winding crown switched the display from ‘time’ to ‘chronograph’. The action caused the hands and the hours disc to instantly change positions and assume the chronograph role, but when the button was pressed again they returned to time-telling – and, no matter how many times the operation was carried out, the watch would remain permanently accurate in both modes.
Although the Mémoire 1 was produced in just 20 examples and is now a piece of horological history, Maurice Lacroix still offers its high-end Masterpiece models with in-house movements and a range of different functions.
This summer, however, it followed the lead of several other brands in launching a watch that aims to help save the planet by being largely produced from recycled materials salvaged from the oceans.
A wide variety of colours are available in the Aikon #tide range, all made from recycled plastic from the ocean
The Aikon #tide has been made in conjunction with award-winning Swiss-based recycling company #tide, which creates granules for plastic injection, yarn for textile applications and filament for 3D printing from upcycled plastic plucked from the world’s oceans and coastlines.
The material has already been used to create everything from carpets to car parts and has proved a big hit for Maurice Lacroix, which launched the Aikon #tide in March as a range of brightly coloured watches with bezels, cases, crowns and buckles all made from the upcycled plastic combined with glass fibre. The resultant composite is said to be twice as hard and five times more resistant than regular plastic and has a far smaller carbon footprint than that created by similar new materials.
The equivalent of 17 plastic bottles go into each 40mm, quartz-powered watch, which offers 100m water resistance and quick-change straps and bracelets that are also made from the composite material.
Maurice Lacroix says it has committed to help remove 10 million plastic bottles from the seas, both by using recycled material to make watches and to sponsor plastic collection expeditions. It will also fund boats, warehouses and educational programmes as well as the purchase of the equipment needed to sort, shred, wash and compact the flakes prior to them being upcycled by #tide.
And such was the uptake for the original watch that there are now 14 models in the range, each of which gets a five-year guarantee. So watch out, Swatch…