Fine & Dandy: Introducing the Czapek & Cie. Promenade Plissé

The Costume Institute of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has just announced that the theme of the 2025 Met Gala is “Tailored for You,” a nod to the space’s accompanying exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” and it’s on suiting and menswear.

This fete celebrates the dandy, or any person who likes to dress to the nines, and if you are stylish enough to score a coveted ticket to the event, Czapek & Cie. has a watch for you: the Promenade Plissé featuring a textile-inspired dial that uses a pleating effect to play with light and shadow.

Another term for dandy is “boulevardier.” The original definition of a boulevardier was a man (usually) who promenaded through the chic boulevards of Paris. In modern times, you could expand this description to include any fashionable city dweller with the élan to know the best bars and restaurants and the finest clothiers.
 

Czapek & Cie. believes that being a dandy is a sign of sophistication regardless of gender. Thus, the brand’s Promenade collection, which launched at Watches and Wonders 2024, came from a desire to create a chic and modern watch that would serve as a canvas for personal expression and a tool to keep time.
 

Moreover, while the initial goal for the Promenade was to develop a women’s watch with a collector-quality mechanism, Czapek & Cie. CEO Xavier de Roquemarel also made it clear that the new Promenade Plissé wasn’t designed only to appeal to women: “We have always believed that gender divisions in watchmaking are largely artificial…making a beautiful watch cannot be reduced to a gender split.”

The signature of the Promenade dial is its asymmetrical design that radiates from the small seconds dial placed at 4:30 to create a feeling of motion.
 

The texture of the Plissé (which means “pleated”) dial references everything from Marilyn Monroe’s famous white halter dress in the 1955 comedy The Seven-Year Itch to Japanese Designer Issey Miyake’s futuristic and unisex Pleats Please collection from 1993.

To achieve the look of fabric scrunching away from the small seconds sub-dial, Czapek employed a complex stamping process developed in partnership with the company’s regular collaborator, Metalem.
 

An added challenge in developing the Plissé dial was integrating the applied indices with diamond-cut angles to reflect the light within the folds of the pleats. Czapek’s designers also enabled the dial decoration to pull most of the focus by using minimalist, semi-skeletonized arrow-shaped hands.

Tailoring is also crucial to achieving the perfect silhouette. Thus, to balance the Plissé’s slim 38mm case, Czapek used its in-house micro-rotor movement.
 

Moreover, the stainless-steel case of this time-only timepiece has been subtly altered and evolved from Czapek’s most recognizable dress watch – the Quai des Bergues model – which is embellished with recessed and sand-blasted case sides, curved crown protection, and a slim, rounded bezel.

The Promenade Plissé is presented in three colors: Ivory, Pearl White, and Rose, with the latter equipped with a Milanese mesh steel bracelet. Production of each color will be limited to 18 pieces.
 

Priced at CHF 16,000, the Promenade Plissé will be available at the Maison’s official retailers worldwide, the Czapek boutique in Geneva, Switzerland, and via the Czapek website.