Watch enthusiasts are generally aware of but a handful of countries other than Switzerland that have prominently asserted their national pride in the modern watchmaking landscape. German and Japanese watches are important and well-established, for example, and although there are movements to revive the once significant British and American watchmaking industries, most remain small-scale operations.
If you stop to think about it, however, France seems well-positioned to have an impact on the world of modern watchmaking for a number of reasons. The country is a significant luxury watch market and has the economic and creative resources, background and passion for contributing meaningfully to the industry. French watches, after all, were once a significant part of the pre-Quartz-Crisis watch industry.
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While many boutique French watch companies remain relatively obscure outside of France, there are actually a number of them doing interesting things. Of course, some very significant watch brands are based in France, including Breguet, Cartier, and Bell & Ross. Further, famed fashion houses such as Hermès and Chanel also have one foot firmly in the world of legitimate, high-end watchmaking. (Van Cleef & Arpels also fits somewhere in the mix.) French watches are able to harness the country’s respected fashion and design strengths, but the country also has a horological history to draw upon.
The area of Besançon borders the Swiss watchmaking region of La Chaux-de-Fonds and was once an important center of French watchmaking. It is unsurprisingly where a number of today’s modern French brands are based, many of which claim regional heritage but also benefit from the proximity to Switzerland’s resources — the very reason the government deliberately created the French watch industry there in the late 18th century.
The majority of just about all watches made today use parts from multiple countries, and the origin or nationality of any watch is in fact far from clear-cut. The brands on this list identify themselves as French and represent everything from companies with proudly in-house movements to those sourcing parts from Switzerland and East Asia and various approaches in between. French watches don’t necessarily exhibit a certain set of national traits (like, say, many German watches often do) but range from rugged military watches to those with more of an artistic focus — and in that way, they represent the modern, diverse country exceedingly well.