I n the pantheon of watchmaking greats, it’s fair to say that Abraham-Louis Breguet sits among the very best.
Born in 1747 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Breguet served his apprenticeship from the age of 15 in Versailles—then the center of the arts and sciences in France—where his precocious talent earned him an early introduction to the watch-loving King Louis XVI.
Having founded his eponymous business at Quai d’Horloge, Paris, in 1775, Breguet went on to make watches for the royal court and a whole firmament of celebrated names ranging from Napoleon Bonaparte to the 1st Duke of Wellington, and from Tsar Alexander I to writers including Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac and Alexander Pushkin.
He is credited with everything from the advancement of the automatic winding mechanism to the patenting of the tourbillon—and even for the invention of the wristwatch itself, through the creation of a piece for Caroline Bonaparte, Queen of Naples, which attached to the arm by a band made from gold threads.
But Breguet was best recognized for his complex pocket watches, not least the remarkable No. 160 ‘grand complication,’ commissioned by an aristocratic soldier, possibly as a gift for Marie Antoinette, which contained every horological function then known.
“To carry a fine Breguet watch is to feel that you have the brains of a genius in your pocket,” said the late Sir David Salomons, the leading collector and preeminent authority on Breguet’s work, who became the owner of this 19th-century ‘super watch’ in the early 1920s (something that Marie Antoinette did not: she was executed in 1793, nine years before the watch was finished).
But while Breguet is often associated with making very special watches for very special people, it is one of his simplest designs that helped to reaffirm both his name and his business as the horological go-to of the great and the good.
It was called the Souscription (Subscription) watch and it was conceived around 1795 following Breguet’s return to Paris after two years in Switzerland, where he had retreated from the worst of the French Revolution.
To help get business back on track, Breguet had the idea of financing the manufacture of affordable watches by taking a 25 percent down payment for each one before starting work—a system akin to modern crowdfunding.
“To carry a fine Breguet watch is to feel that you have the brains of a genius in your pocket.”
The arrangement secured the watch for the customer and, with sufficient cash in hand, enabled Breguet to buy the supplies needed to make the watches in worthwhile numbers.
Sales registers from the era, now preserved in Breguet’s Place Vendôme museum, contain a first reference to the Souscription watch in 1796, but it wasn’t until the following year that the offer was publicized through an advertising pamphlet—a novel form of marketing for the industry.
It promoted a robust pocket watch in a case of gold or silver measuring 61 millimeters in diameter. The shock-protected movement was simple and dependable, with a large central barrel giving 36 hours autonomy.
It could be wound from the back or from the dial—the latter being of white enamel marked in five-minute increments, which enabled the time to be read to the nearest minute despite the watch having only one hand.
The case was hinged at the front and the back, and extensively engine-turned in typical Breguet style—the pattern being not only aesthetically pleasing, but also making the watch easier to grip and reducing the chance of finger marks.
Such was the popularity of the Souscription that it remained available for 30 years, with around 700 made at an original price of 600 livres. Today, Souscription pocket watches are highly collectible, as demonstrated by the $28,800 achieved at Sotheby’s New York in December 2024 for an example delivered in 1804.
Indeed, the Souscription watches are so central to the story of Abraham-Louis Breguet’s rise to horological immortality that the modern-day Breguet brand marked this year’s 250th anniversary with a superb, wrist-worn interpretation of the original. The ‘Classique Souscription 2025’ distills every significant element of the pocket watch into an elegant, wrist-worn version that is unmistakably ‘Breguet.’
The dial is finished in exquisite ‘grand feu’ white enamel and marked with characteristic ‘Breguet numerals’ in black to match the railway track minute markers that enable the time to be accurately displayed using the single, central hand in the same way as the original.
The hand, too, is of the classic Breguet design and finished in the flame-blued coloring that became a trademark, along with the ‘secret signature’ that, in the right light, can be made out on the lower half of the Souscription 2025’s dial, along with an edition number and the word ‘Souscription.’
And, as in Breguet’s day, the wording—there to create a hidden guarantee of authenticity—is inscribed into the enamel using a diamond-point pantograph.
The dial is protected by a sapphire crystal in the thin, gently domed ‘chevé’ profile that Breguet invented, while the elegant, 40-millimeter case is hewn from ‘Breguet gold,’ a special blend of gold, silver, copper and palladium.
Curved lugs and a total thickness of just 10.8 millimeters make for comfort-enhancing ergonomics, while true horophiles will find the view of the watch from the back even more beguiling than it is from the front.
Here, another sapphire crystal reveals the new hand-wound ‘VSOO’ calibre made from gilded brass, finished to match the Breguet gold of the case and decorated with a combination of shot blasting and a new guilloché pattern called ‘Quai de l’Horloge.’
The mechanism is instantly recognizable as being based on Breguet’s original Souscription movement, but the distinctive, central ratchet wheel is engraved with script from the 1797 pamphlet, in a facsimile of Breguet’s hand.
Even the cushion-shaped box the watch is delivered in harks back to the leather cases in which Breguet watches were once supplied, being made from red Moroccan leather lined in blue.
“This is the first time that we have taken a pocket watch and adapted it to a wristwatch format, respecting as closely as possible the architecture of the original timepiece,” explained Gregory Kissling, Breguet’s CEO.
“We did away with our usual, straight lugs in favour of curved versions and, for the case middle, we opted for a satin finish rather than fluting (a signature Breguet aesthetic) as the original Souscription watch was not fluted.
“In addition, we incorporated a chevé glass—and the incredible thing is that we recently discovered that this form of crystal, which everyone uses today, was invented by A.-L. Breguet.”
But would the great man have approved? Almost certainly, I’d say.
