Philippe Dufour Simplicity 37mm Plat

Monsieur Dufour spent several years working in the Caribbean before returning to his native Switzerland where he was employed by some of the country’s finest watchmakers to create highly complicated Grande Sonnerie pocket watches.

In 1982 he set up as an independent watchmaker and has since produced three different models. The Grande Sonnerie and the Duality, both of which were highly complicated works of the watchmaker’s art, have today been succeeded by the Dufour Simplicity.

What interested me about Philippe Dufour was that he appears to be swimming against the current. The rest of the Swiss watch making industry is obsessed by inventing more and more complications to add to the basic watch. Dufour has decided to do just the opposite. His Simplicity, as the name suggests, performs only one function. It tells the time. There is no annual calendar, no moon phase, not even a date. With the help of a single assistant Philippe Dufour produces no more than twenty five watches a year.

I asked him why he had stopped making a complicated watch, and his reply surprised me. “Once upon a time I made a watch which was full of interesting ideas,” he told me in his thick French accent, “but then I realized that simplicity was purity.” There was a pause. “When you gain in complexity you lose in accuracy. Take cars, for example. A Ferrari is wonderful on the roads but it cannot cross a field. That is because Ferrari have not tried to do too much. I do the same with my watches.”

I asked Dufour if he considered his watches toys for boys. “On the contrary. They are definitely not toys. And, come to think of it, they are not dreams for men either.” He sucked vigorously on his pipe. My watches are one thing only. They are art. Not toys and not dreams.”

By now I was beginning to salivate at the prospect of buying a Dufour Simplicity. Alas, I was soon awakened from my fantasy. “I closed the waiting list three years ago” announced Philippe Dufour. “You are too late. I still have a few watches still to make, and then I will start to build a different watch. But that won't be for at least three years.”

The prospect of a new Dufour excited me strangely. What would the new watch consist of, I wondered. Philippe Dufour smiled a sphinx-like smile. “I cannot possibly tell you. I am still working on the watch and it must remain my secret until I am ready to tell you.”

It was all very frustrating. I had arrived at Le Solliat three years too late and when it came to the new watch it appeared that I was three years too early. But in spite of these disappointments I realized that it had been a privilege to meet the man who most experts would agree is quite simply the finest watchmaker in Switzerland today.