Born in Neuchâtel in 2004 and named with an anagram of the town, Hautlence makes watches that often swap ordinary hands for chains, spheres and jumping numerals.
An anagram of Neuchâtel
Hautlence emerged in Neuchâtel in 2004, and its name rearranges the letters of the town. Guillaume Tetu and his team set out to change the way time is displayed. They drew their ideas from train mechanisms and from architectural design.
Tetu put the plan simply: “We decided to reinvent the way to tell the time, and play with it in the mechanical approach.”
The HL01 dates from those beginnings. It turned away from conventional hands and round movements. Instead it had a rectangular, horizontal case and a part the brand calls the Lokomotive arm. That arm drives jumping minutes and flicking hours.
Hands, replaced
Across the collection, ordinary hands give way to mechanisms such as rotating chains and retrograde displays. The Linear is a clear example. Its hour display jumps once an hour, with the largest jump at noon, and the brand says the wearer can hear it happen. It cannot be set backwards, so every correction moves forward.
The Sphere carries the hours on a small globe. Every 60 minutes it makes what the brand calls a gyroscopic jump, turning about one and a half times and changing direction three times. Four bevel gears on two crossed axes, inclined at 21 degrees, drive the movement. Opposite, a retrograde minute hand snaps back on the hour.
The watches
The Vagabonde shows wandering hours. The Helix puts a tourbillon with a cylindrical hairspring at the centre of the dial, between retrograde displays for the hours and minutes. It is water resistant to 100 metres.
The HLXX marked 20 years by bringing the HL01 back in a more compact titanium case. The Retrovision ’47 marked the same anniversary and opened a Concepts line. It imagines a Hautlence of the 1940s, and hides its tourbillon behind a speaker grille, so the case acts as a resonator.
Schaffhausen today
In 2012 Hautlence became part of MELB Holding, owned by the Meylan family of Le Brassus, alongside H. Moser & Cie. Edouard Meylan is now chief executive of H. Moser & Cie. In 2020 Hautlence’s operations moved to Schaffhausen, to work closely with H. Moser & Cie. The move brought synergies with Precision Engineering AG, the group’s component maker. It now supplies the hairspring for the hand-wound A82 calibre in the Sphere Series 4.
The Linear was the first complication created in Schaffhausen, developed with Agenhor. The Vagabonde Series 4 was the first Hautlence created after the move. The brand designed it from the inside out, with a new case built around an in-house automatic movement. Since the new collections of 2022, each watch has been limited to a maximum of 28 pieces. The logo, a Möbius strip, hides the numbers 2 and 8.
The brand still describes itself as born in Neuchâtel and living in Schaffhausen. The anagram travelled with it.
At a glance
- Founded: 2004, Neuchâtel
- Founder: Guillaume Tetu and his team
- Based in: Schaffhausen, Switzerland
- Known for: jumping, wandering and retrograde displays in place of ordinary hands; editions of up to 28 pieces
- Independent: part of MELB Holding (the Meylan family), alongside H. Moser & Cie.
Sources: Hautlence’s own website (Our Story, legal notice, and product pages for the HLXX, Linear, Sphere, Vagabonde Series 4, Helix and Retrovision ’47).