Givenchy’s Seven a tribute to quartz tradition

The market for luxury watches suffered a slight jolt earlier this year when the Apple Watch was launched, a high-tech gadget that told the time and did everything besides — like taking phone calls, playing music and looking expensive. Experts from the worlds of both technology and fashion began speculating if Apple’s move would spell the end of the watch manufacturing industry as we know it, and indeed of what for centuries has remained the essence of watchmaking: quartz crystals.

Now that the euphoria has subsided, and since no one quite ended up buying the Apple Watch, the time seems about right to return to the timepieces that continue to matter. The launch of French designer brand Givenchy’s new “high-precision Swiss-made quartz movement” watch, named Seven, signifies, among other things, a return to order of sorts for top watchmakers, who are choosing to uphold tradition in the face of bland modernity. 

Like all the other Givenchy watches, Seven was named following the brand’s unique policy of choosing only odd numbers for watch names (which makes one wonder if the “house of Givenchy”, as the estate is called, has, aside from top designers, a few veteran numerologists also on the payroll). 

Precision and design are the two factors that are of paramount important in art of watchmaking. And Givenchy’s Seven scores high on both counts. Its leather strap — that can be wrapped four times around the wrist — as well as its minimalistic, curved rectangular case gives it the right amount of finesse, and just the right amount of bling for it function as a legit piece of jewellery. That’s why the people at Givenchy have taken to calling Seven something more than a watch: “Seven,” a statement from the designer brand says, “is a luxury couture bracelet more than a traditional timekeeper.”