PARIS — Mounir Moufarrige, president of luxury watch firm U-Boat, will launch a new brand at the Baselworld watch and jewelry fair.
Moufarrige, a luxury executive famous for reviving Montblanc and hiring Stella McCartney at Chloé, is reviving the British watch brand L. Kendall, which traces its roots back to London in 1742, making it older even than Switzerland’s Vacheron Constantin and France’s Breguet.
He noted that British watchmakers were considered at the time the best in the world, before the Swiss industry rose to prominence in the 19th century. “There aren’t many English brands today on the market,” he said. “I thought: OK, time for a revival in English watchmaking.”
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Of course, unlike other 18th-century brands, watchmaker Larcum Kendall’s name has been dormant for centuries. And while historians consider him a first-rate craftsman, Kendall was not an inventor in the vein of Abraham-Louis Breguet. However, his creations did play a key role in some of the greatest seafaring expeditions of his era. Having been appointed a member of the Board of Longitude in 1765, Kendall was commissioned to copy watchmaker John Harrison’s model of a clock useful for navigation at sea.
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The marine chronometer, dubbed K1, took three years and a small fortune to build, and was assigned to Captain James Cook for his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas in 1772. On his return in 1775, Cook reported: “Mr. Kendall’s watch has exceeded the expectations of its most zealous advocates.”
With very few surviving examples of Kendall’s work to draw on, Moufarrige has tapped Italo Fontana, the creative director of U-Boat, to head design duties for the new brand. It will launch with three models, featuring three different complicated movements, for a total of seven references.
“I was just so impressed with his interpretation of this whole story: How to do a watch that would remind you of everything that Kendall was about, but in a modern way,” said Moufarrige.
The Swiss-made watches will be unveiled at Baselworld, where L. Kendall will occupy a 1,000-square-foot stand on the first floor of Hall 1. The timepieces, featuring 50-millimeter cases, will retail for 10,000 euros, or around $11,300 at current exchange.
“I’m banking on retailers liking it. Retailers decide very quickly, because they see something: They like it, or they don’t like it. The time of reflection is 10 seconds,” said Moufarrige, who was nonetheless confident. “I don’t think there’s anything like it on the market.”