ROGER DUBUIS

Godfather of Time

“I’m a perfectionist

because I’ve been taught to achieve only the best,” says Roger

Dubuis. “At the end of the day, you have to be

proud of what you’ve made.” The man behind

some of the most spectacular watches on the market told

CLARISSA SANTOSO why he will never retire

“WHAT YOU’RE GIVING to your client is an emotion. You have to make the client feel something good. This is the key to being successful as a watchmaker.” The speaker is Roger Dubuis, a living legend in the Swiss watch industry. He was born to a woodsman’s family in Switzerland in 1938. “In my village, there were a lot of different craftsmen,” he recalls. “I was friends with the village cobbler, who was in charge of ringing the bells in the steeple of the village church. One day, he asked me if I could help him out as he was getting old. This was the beginning of the beginning, where everything started. When I climbed up to ring the bells, I had to pass around the movement of the big clock. It was a big mechanism with weights and you had to wind it. Looking at it, I just fell in love, and I did everything I could to enter watchmaking school.”

Before he started making his own watches that people delight and marvel at, Dubuis took his first job at Longines, in after sales service, and stayed with the company for nine years. “I was responsible for contacting clients and repairing watches,” he says. In 1966, he joined the high complications department of Patek Philippe, where he worked for 14 years.

“When I joined Patek Philippe, it was really about discovering how to make a watch from A to Z, because I would actually manually make it and this was a lot of learning for me. It involved making models such as perpetual calendars, chronographs, including the split-second type, as well as minute repeaters. Those 14 years had a profound influence on my own quest for excellence. During this time, the directors of the Geneva Watchmaking Gallery suggested that I restore watches to be put up for auction. This unique opportunity enabled me to immerse myself in the history of Geneva watchmaking and to become acquainted with some of its prominent figures, while enjoying the opportunity of working on some absolute masterpieces. After these experiences, I decided to become an independent watchmaker and so I started my own business.”

After leaving Patek Philippe, he became an independent watchmaker specialising in the restoration of old antique watches, pocket watches and egg watches. “What I loved and enjoyed the most was working on antique music boxes and cuckoo clocks,” he smiles. “It was not easy at that time, and I did any repair work that I was given. It was another way of entering the watchmaking world, but it was also a very crucial time for me. As I was working on old timepieces, I learned not only how to repair them, but also what watchmakers used to do in the past. As I learned the history, I began thinking how they would have thought 200 to 300 years ago. After this, I had a strong will to create my own watch plates and movements, and that’s how the brand started.”

Ironically, the first wristwatch that Dubuis fell in love with was not one with any complications. “This is really funny and embarrassing,” he says. “We used to have this shop where you could buy things really cheaply. I was very young and I fell in love with this horrible black watch with green indexes. The first serious watch I bought with what little money I had was an Omega. I was in watchmaking school then, and I bought it so I could be on time for the train. But my favourite watch has to be the one that I always wear nowadays, the classic Roger Dubuis Hommage.”

In 1995, at the age of 57, Dubuis and Carlos Dias, formerly a designer for Franck Muller, decided to launch their own company. Certainly, Dubuis’ youthful spirit, talent and optimism