Hands-OnThe Gérald Genta Minute Repeater – Quintessential Genta, Revised

La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton has a deep, inextricable tie to Gérald Genta, long before the revival of the brand alongside Daniel Roth in 2023. Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini, the watchmakers who run La Fabrique du Temps LV, were the last two watchmakers to work directly under Genta's guidance. 

Part of their core ethos was a dedication to highly complicated, boldly shaped design that—true to Genta's style—was unique and unmistakable among the other brands attempting to carry the torch of complication. One example, which has fascinated me for years, is the Gérald Genta Sonnerie. When it was launched in 1994, it was one of the most complicated watches in the market, with its 800-part caliber 31000 developed by Pierre-Michel Golay, who would later work for Franck Muller. Today, with the second launch from the recently revived Genta brand, we see a spiritual successor of sorts with the new Gérald Genta Minute Repeater, limited to ten pieces per year and priced at CHF 320,000.

In the 1980s, Genta's obsession with minute repeaters reached a fever pitch. He created automatic versions, water-resistant minute repeaters (a massive feat, even today), and the aforementioned Sonnerie with perpetual calendar. Then, with the revival of the brand came another iconic part of the Genta story, a jump hour, retrograde minute repeater with Mickey Mouse on the dial for the Only Watch auction. 

If you look closely at the photos below, you'll note the similarities in architecture between that watch and the new GG-002 movement. Simplified (without the jump hour module) and slimmer in its 40mm by 9.6mm yellow gold case, the new Genta Minute repeater is a refined bit of masterful watchmaking.

To anyone who has seen a Gérald Genta from the 1980s or 1990s, the design here is unmistakable, even if it's a bit more refined from the angularity that defined the early era of his work. The brand's artistic director, Matthieu Hegi, designed this new case shape and dial approach from the ground up, with an eye toward the past but not looking to replicate previous designs. 

I spoke with Evelyne Genta, the late designer's widow, last year when Credor re-released the Locomotive, and got insight into the evolution of his vision as he refined his tastes over the decades. If Genta were alive, we'd likely see more of this sloping pebble-like shape in his designs today. Even with the case a bit more rounded, a lot of his essence remains.

The singular, fixed lug extending out from the vertical center of the case is something that you only really see on Genta (with very few exceptions) and instantly signals a design lineage. The stepped, sloping cushion case is reminiscent of the beehive-style design of the brand's past Sonneries as well. 

But other things here are more subtle, like the choice to use natural Onyx for the dial as an homage to Genta's passion for stone dials. It's something that we've seen play out with variations of the brand's surprising first release, the Gentissima Oursin, including one with an outstanding Fire Opal dial. Love it or hate it, it's impossible to say it's not a bold design.

The brand's use of fine, bar-shaped indices paired with delicate stick hands immediately dates the watch as heritage-inspired. The dial really cleverly features a circular printing within a rounded square for the minute track, which reminds me of a more subtle approach to solve the same "issue" that Patek Philippe faced with their ref. 5950 coussin split-seconds chronograph. There's also a continuation of the dial material to the onyx cabochon that mixes Genta style with Cartier.

La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton has really been knocking it out of the park with the high-end independent-style approach to watchmaking they're doing. Yes, they're a part of the LVMH conglomerate, but it feels that Jean Arnault has taken a sort of "elbows out" approach to protect some of the more special things done inside LFdT from becoming too commercialized or too disconnected from the heart of good watchmaking. 

This doesn't include their collaborations with Rexhep Rexhepi and Kari Voutilainen so far. I'm thinking more about the Daniel Roth releases and, more specifically, a few minute repeaters I've seen from the brand. The Escales Autour du Monde 'Escale en Amazonie' Pocket Watch (shown below), released earlier this year, is one of the most marvelously finished movements I've seen in my career, and they've released other one-off versions with different scenes.

While not quite at the level of the reportedly €3 million pocket watch above, the GG-002 movement is still complex enough, and well-finished enough, that the brand plans to only produce 10 watches per year. The movement, adjusted to six positions, features 32 jewels and an impressive 80-hour power reserve. It also features a bar-click mechanism for winding, which is designed for the tactile experience of winding the watch (something you'll need to do the more you use the repeater, as such mechanisms are notoriously power-hungry). The centrifugal governor (or inertia wheel), which creates inertial drag on the repeater train, slowing it to the desired tempo, is shaped in an octagonal shape in honor of Genta's favorite form.

The repeater itself is a stainless steel single-circumference and two-hammer system, meaning that the gong goes around the outside of the watch only once (as opposed to the longer gongs on a Cathedral Gong minute repeater) and the watch chimes two tones (as opposed to a carillon-style with three chimes). The sound is beneficially amplified by the fact that the gongs are affixed directly to the case, allowing better sound propagation. 

While I'm not one of the lucky handful in the world that has multiple repeaters on hand to compare and contrast, I do get a chance to listen to them relatively often. Anecdotally, people say that rose gold is the ideal material and gives a "warmer" sound, but I haven't seen any legitimate test that proves that as fact. To do so, I'd argue that you'd have to recase the same movement into all different materials and eliminate the variable of the movement itself. That said, I do think this is one of the louder repeaters I've heard in recent memories, and satisfyingly warm without being too "tinny" as you will sometimes find with certain examples.

The watch certainly has a distinctive look, but one that seems to be growing in popularity as "geezer watches" and fashion-forward buyers have made the 1980s-1990s the era du jour to placate a bit of nostalgia. For all its "look," the single lug sitting in the middle of the 9.6mm case, the watch has a more balanced feel than the sometimes-top-heavy vintage iterations it draws from, and while some will certainly decry the watch as "slab-sided," that is indeed the point here.

The brand has not shared technical specs on things like water resistance (which would likely be minimal if any), but it's not likely to be a daily-wear watch for any of the ten potential buyers per year. Yet the case itself, if simplified to an ultra-thin time only, and overall aesthetic would likely do the trick quite well for more than a few. When we received this sample in for photography, I wore it around the office for the entire day (when it wasn't being photographed)—a perk of the job to be sure—and never felt like I was wearing something unwieldy. 

As previously mentioned, the new Gérald Genta Minute repeater is priced at CHF 320,000 (or around $400,000). The Gérald Genta Mickey Mouse Jump Hour Minute Repeater made for the Only Watch auction serves as the brand's sole internal benchmark. Unfortunately, the auction was marred by delays and the hacking scandal that affected Christie's, which prevented online bidding. That's probably part of the reason why the watch sold for CHF 170,000, which is less than half the estimate. It was also a unique piece that required a particular client to bid, whereas this will capture a broader audience.

Comparing against the rest of the market is hard. Patek's only similar "time only" minute repeater, the ref. 5178G, features a "Rare Handcrafts" dial and automatic movement and is priced at $563,011 (at time of publication) and is nearly a millimeter thicker. Its predecessor, with Breguet numerals on an enamel dial, sells for a bit less on the secondary market at below $475,000. Audemars Piguet's Code 11.59 Supersonnerie ref. 26395NR was CHF 325,000 ($400,000) when it came out in 2023, but measures even larger at 41mm in diameter by 13.6mm. Vacheron Constantin does not currently have a standalone repeater in their lineup, but their Patrimony repeater was around $350,000 back in 2019. 

Minute repeaters are notoriously one of the most difficult complications to achieve in watchmaking. The fact that Gérald Genta was able to create one this good for their second watch of the revival—regardless of the fact that they leaned on La Fabrique du Temps' infrastructure—is an impressive achievement. It also signals to me that the brand has an eye on sticking to the core of what made the Gérald Genta brand special in the past: complication-forward pieces with standout designs.

For more information visit Gérald Genta's website.