THE SAME, ONLY BETTER

Intricate vintage movements revved up with high-tech metals. Sporty, shockproof watches as coveted by men as they are by women. Swiss brand Cvstos opens its first boutique in the world at Mandarin Gallery.  

What watch enthusiasts want: self-winding timepieces (they keep time as you move your arm) with complicated mechanisms like minute-repeaters (they chime the number of minutes when you press a button) and flying tourbillons (they ensure that mechanical watches are accurate). The problem: If you don’t wear an automatic watch for a couple of days, it won’t keep perfect time, and minute-repeaters and tourbillons are usually so fragile that they have to be kept in dehumidified rooms.

That’s where Cvstos comes in. Sassoun Sirmakes, the brand’s CEO and co-founder, says: “We look at age-old movements and convert them into something better. For example, all watches tell the time, and all automatic watches will self-wind as the wearer moves, but for every twitch of the wrist, ours will wind more, and therefore stay ticking longer.”

Proving his point, its latest model, the Challenge CTR-S, has an eight-day power reserve – four times that of an average automatic watch. The brand has also dealt with the fragility of flying tourbillons and minute repeaters, treating them so that they’re shock- and water-resistant up to 100m. Chief designer and co-founder Antonio Terranova says you can even go diving with the brand’s watches.

Re-belle Twin-Time Sapphire and Tsavorite with croco strap and semi-precious stones, $23,800 each