Love Languages: Van Cleef & Arpels Takes Romance to New Heights

Every year at Watches and Wonders, we look forward to seeing the latest additions to Van Cleef & Arpels’ Poetic Complications and Extraordinary Objects collections simply because they combine storytelling, creative curiosity, and technical innovation to make the most charming timepieces at the fair – inside and out.

This year, “Love” is the theme that animates Van Cleef & Arpels’ enchanting offerings: The Bal des Amoureux and the Naissance de l’Amour automaton.

The story of Van Cleef & Arpels itself is a fine romance. The brand was born from the marriage of Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle Arpels in 1895. In 2010, the Maison introduced the Pont des Amoureux collection, a retrograde display in which a woman indicated the hours on the left and a man depicted the minutes on the right. Each day at noon or midnight, the pair would meet at the top of a bridge for a kiss.

These bejeweled watches have become a signature of the brand’s Poetry of Time collection, expressing a marriage of mechanical expertise and its métiers d’art skills. This year, the luxury house has expanded its range with a new location for a romantic rendezvous.
 

The new Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux Automate watch ($148,000) resets the action from the bridge to a guinguette (an open-air dance café in the Paris suburbs and surrounding areas popular in the 19th century). An automaton movement brings the lovers closer together for their 12 o’clock kiss. This tender scene can also be activated on demand with the push of a button on the watch case.
 

The Bal des Amoureux’s automaton movement is also new to VC&A’s collections. It’s not just the mechanics that bring this timepiece to life. The illusion of depth is achieved via five different planes. For example, festive lanterns hang above a bed of cobblestones in white gold that suggest the streets of Paris.

Moreover, the whole picture is shaded in by a palette of shades of colored grisaille enamel work that evokes the lights and shadow of a starlit night.
 

Meanwhile, the caseback echoes the scene on the dial, with an enamel decal on sapphire glass and an engraving depicting the couple dancing.

The Bal des Amoureux may wear its heart on your sleeve, but the Naissance de l’Amour automaton continues VC&A’s ongoing love story with table clocks.

Dubbed the Extraordinary Objects collection, this line of table clocks debuted in 2022 with Rêveries de Berylline and expanded in 2023 and 2024, notably with the Eveil du Cyclamen and the Bouton d’Or.
 

At the center of the 2025 edition is a winged Cupid, which is rendered in white, rose, and yellow gold and studded with diamond, sitting atop a column in sculpted rose gold.

Once set in motion, Cupid slowly rises from clouds fashioned from white gold, diamonds, and three shades of pink sapphires while beating its plique-à-jour enamel wings. Moreover, as Cupid ascends into the heavens, it is accompanied by the melody of a carillon before returning to this hideaway.
 

The base of the automaton is carved entirely in iron eye, a highly variegated stone with golden highlights. Time is told via a graduated rotating ring around the base that uses two lacquered feathers to point to the hours.

On top of this base sits a bowl of petrified palmwood – a new material to the atelier – and holds a basket of feathers. This complex mechanism was designed in partnership with François Junod’s studio in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland.
 

This precious object is at the crossroads of métiers d’art and the mechanical expertise of Van Cleef & Arpels’ Watchmaking Workshops in Geneva. Illustrating its Poetry of Time vision, two Extraordinary Objects offer to contemplate the passing of time to the rhythm of a cupid’s beating wings or to admire a celestial ballet. Finally, bejeweled watches celebrate the tradition of jewels that tell time so dear to the Maison.
 

Or as Catherine Rénier, President and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels, said in a press release, both timepieces “embody the Poetry of Time dear to Van Cleef & Arpels, its mechanical expertise and its attachment to métiers d’art, while expressing one of its founding sources of inspiration: love.”

And what the world needs now is love, sweet love.
 

To learn more about the brand’s Watches and Wonders 2025 novelties, check out the Van Cleef & Arpels website.