The Obsessions of Time: Arnaud Chastaingt, Chanel’s Horological Aesthete

In the world of horology, age is often equated with legitimacy. Centuries-old Maisons whisper to one another in the dialect of tourbillons, complications, and hand-beveled bridges. Then there is Chanel: a house that, in 1987, entered this world of tradition and coveted savoir-faire not with reverence, but with an unapologetic flair. It arrived, as Arnaud Chastaingt puts it, “without permission.”

Since 2013, Chastaingt has served as Director of the Chanel Watchmaking Creation Studio, a title that belies the poetry with which he approaches his métier. Chanel’s inaugural timepiece, the Première, was not so much a watch as it was a manifesto.
 

“That Première watch wasn’t at all in the traditional watchmaking vein. It had an octagonal shape inspired by a perfume bottle stopper, with a silent dial. I always saw it as more than a watch – it was a lesson in style,” Chastaingt says, recalling the object that set the tone for the Maison’s horological journey.

It is no surprise that he sees the Première not as an anomaly but as the genesis of a vocabulary. At Chanel, watchmaking was never just about heritage or mechanics; it’s about expressing the ethos of couture in another form.

Chastaingt is not a design theorist; he is, instead, a dreamer who draws. “I’ve always seen drawing as a tool to communicate my ideas, not the creative act itself. It’s my obsessions that lead the ideas,” he confides, with the candor of a man for whom sketches are the scaffolding of deeper obsessions. And among those, the J12 looms large.

Launched in 2000 and celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the J12 remains one of Chanel’s truly iconic timepieces – a 38 mm watch, crafted in pristine ceramic, designed with women in mind yet free of gendered tropes.
 

For Chastaingt, it was revelatory: “I think it was the J12 that first ignited my fascination with horology. Before that, I thought the watch world belonged to technicians, to horologists – I hadn’t realized it could also be a playground for creativity.”

Since 2019, he has shepherded the J12’s evolution with near-religious restraint. Even the J12 BLEU, his most recent iteration, preserves the case architecture of its black and white predecessors. But the color – deep, lustrous, almost meditative – is entirely new.
 

“Chanel has truly elevated ceramic to the status of a precious material,” Chastaingt explains. “Their expertise in this domain is extraordinary. While it's not my technical field, it inspires me profoundly. The J12 BLEU was my way of expressing the creative potential of ceramic.”

In the Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds lies Chanel’s G&F Châtelain discreet manufacture. Here, design meets engineering with the rigor of a haute couture atelier. High-tech ceramics, proprietary calibers, painstaking finishing: everything is in service to beauty.

Chastaingt sees this place not just as a workshop but as a conduit. Without it, his fantasies might remain just that – fantasies. He speaks reverently of the teams who translate his abstractions into matter, of the rare privilege of time: the time to experiment, to fail, to start again. “Giving time,” he insists, “is the only real luxury in modern creation.”
 

Such patience breeds objects that live between disciplines. A Chanel watch is a gesture, a silhouette, a punctuation in style. The button, the braid, the lacquer black as ink, the comet, and the lion – all drawn from the Maison’s sartorial lexicon – find their way, subtly or boldly, into each horological piece.

Chastaingt returns often to the apartment at 31 rue Cambon – the sanctum of Gabrielle Chanel herself. He speaks of it not as a shrine, but as a source, rich in symbols: mirrored lions, crystal spheres, gilt coromandel screens. “I go there to collect myself,” he says, without irony. “It’s a place dense with codes.”

From such visits emerged the Diamond Astroclock (introduced this year at Watches and Wonders Geneva), a unique object that transcends categories – half clock, half sculpture. Inspired by a crystal sphere held aloft by bronze lions in Mademoiselle’s apartment, the piece tells time through a celestial language. The lion – her astrological sign – is rendered in diamonds; the hour hand is shaped like a comet, echoing the design she created in 1932.
 

For Chastaingt, this is the past reimagined, the vocabulary of heritage rearticulated for a new age. Chanel, he says, doesn’t freeze its codes in amber. “It is a living heritage,” he insists – dynamic, not burdensome.

Arnaud Chastaingt defines his métier in the simplest terms: “My job is to dream – and to help others dream.” These dreams often begin as obsessions, crystallized through sketches and nurtured by master craftsmen. At Chanel, he has found a place where such fantasies are not only permitted but expected.
 

To check out the brand’s current lineup of timepieces, visit the Chanel website.