Leopoldo Celi
CEO Fugue Watches
Watchmakers roundtable : How do watches offer new readings of time?
After spending seven years at LVMH in various marketing and communication roles, Leopoldo Celi launched Fugue at age 30. This new watch brand was first developed as a side project to his professional activity and launched with the help of social media. Passionate about watchmaking and a collector of vintage watches, his objective was to give a new meaning to the watch through a contemporary product with a strong symbolism linked to time. A self-taught watch professional, he surrounds himself with a team capable of realizing his vision of an innovative and customizable watch, that respects the traditional know-how and codes of the sector. In 2019, he began training as a watchmaker at the Lycée Diderot in Paris to refine his technical knowledge.
Clockmakers have always shaped the most innovating mechanisms to offer precision all around the clock. But what do they measure exactly? In the past, stopwatches were scientific objects that were indispensable for navigators. But today their purpose has changed. More than ever, watches have become a way of life, a symbol of a delicate know-how, a social status, an access to a certain measure of time… a privilege to choose to know what time it is anywhere else on the planet. Possessing a watch that required months of work spent on a workbench gives the illusion of acquiring time’s sap. The clockmaker’s lifeblood spent while designing the cogs and the decorations of the exceptional piece of work. Some clockmakers address a way different message than a simple measure of time, they stop time and rewrite it on demand. Sometimes, they even claim they can slow it down… Haven’t watches become messengers of a new reading, revealing new challenges our society has to face? Don’t they now escape time itself? Meet traditional clockmakers and clockmaking specialists.