Introducing: The S.T. Dupont x Franck Muller Lighter That’s Reigniting The Fire For Franck (Live Pics)
During Watches & Wonders in April, I made a secret appointment on my last day in Geneva. As the very prim and proper show full of Europeans in trim blue suits and black shoes came to a close, I snuck out early on Friday to pick up a car shuttle – Mercedes S Class – to visit Watchland on the outskirts of Geneva. Opened in the 1990s, Watchland is the sprawling HQ of Franck Muller. According to some, it was originally conceived of as a “theme park” for watch enthusiasts, a suggestion from no less than Sir Elton John. When I told people I had to leave the sterile, fluorescently-lit halls of the Palexpo Convention Center to visit Franck Muller, there was only one response: Laughter.
Franck Muller’s Watchland.
For some reason – well for many reasons, some good and some not – Franck Muller feels like the crazy uncle of the Swiss watch industry. Its modern watches provide the answer to the question: What if the excess of the Wall Street ’80s and the dot-com boom of the ’90s that led to a booming popularity of large, blinged-out watches just kept on going, full steam ahead, for another few decades?
Probably something like this year’s Cintree Curvex™ Imperial Tourbillon Baguette.
Watchland isn’t quite Disney World but it might as well be a parallel universe. The buildings are more countryside mansion than industrial office park, even if inside are the CNC machines and watchmakers’ benches you might expect of a modern Swiss manufacturer. And Franck Muller is a real manufacturer, making its cases, movements, dials, and other components. It’s just that the final product indulges some of luxury’s worst impulses, an inability to say “no” to more, more, more.
But Franck Muller is completely unapologetic about being Franck Muller. Most brands unveil their handful of new releases in small rooms at a conference center by the Geneva airport. But Franck Muller takes up the entire attic of its farmhouse on the outskirts of Geneva to put on full display something like 30 new watches, certainly more if you include all the different color combinations. Unlike most brands, they simply give the customers what they want, which is more, more, more. Want a Cintree Curvex Tourbillon in green? Sure, we can do that. Oh, you said orange? Here you go.
It’s usually bad form to quote press releases but let me provide just this tidbit from Franck Muller’s 2024 releases so you get a feel for the vibe that is Franck Muller – totally over-the-top, with lots of diamonds:
“Among the 2024 novelties, Franck Muller reveals the stunning Curvex CX Giga Tourbillon Skeleton with an incredible skeleton design, the new Curvex CX Master Jumper with its three jumping functions, and the Cintrée Curvex™ Imperial Tourbillon Baguette, adorned with magnificent baguette diamonds. The craftsmen have excelled in creating a new process the Carbon Damascus Steel and developed a new collection that features a magnificent open back and an entirely in-house manufactured movement. Furthermore, Franck Muller unveils the Lady Round Skeleton Baguette and the Vanguard™ Lady Slim Skeleton.”
Crazy uncle, Crazy Dream.
But I’m not here to talk about a skeletonized triple-jumping Vanguard with baguette diamonds or whatever else. These are not the Franck Muller watches that are interesting to me. There was one release I wanted to see at Watchland that was so ridiculously and perfectly Franck Muller.
Because who really needs an $70,000 palladium lighter with a built-in watch, a skeletonized movement, limited to just 88 pieces (in four colors, granted)?
That’s what the S.T. Dupont x Franck Muller Master Lighter is. I would ask who it’s for, but when I visited Watchland, it was teeming with clients, and they all wanted to play with the lighter, and so did I.
The fun starts with Dupont’s signature cling sound when you flip open the cap of the Master Lighter. I’m no smoker and cigars make me sick, but damn it if that cling didn’t have me asking for the closest Cuban. Here’s a raw video to show what I mean.
Pass me a stogie.
The S.T. Dupont x Franck Muller Master Lighter is a good bit larger than your standard Dupont Lighter (39 x 66mm, basically a few iPhone Max 15s stacked together). The Master Lighter comes in four versions: all are plated with palladium featuring a Clous de Paris pattern, one coated with blacked-out PVD. The dials have Franck Muller’s signature exploding numerals in a variety of colors. Of course, the Color Dream is the best (speaking objectively), with the skeletonized bridges on the other side in matching colors. Each of those bridges is anodized in a different color, a task I’m told is non-trivial in complexity. The Black PVD with SuperLumiNova numerals is a close second after Color Dream, with the white and blue lacquered dials more subdued, or as far as subdued goes in Watchland.
The Master Lighter doesn’t stop there because Franck Muller never does. The axis for the hands pokes through the gas reservoir – you’ll notice that the hours and minutes are on the dial side, while the seconds hand is on the back, spinning over the skeletonized movement. The movement has a symmetrical layout with its mainspring sitting above the escapement, and criss-crossing bridges, a familiar Franck Muller motif.
Franck Muller’s far from the first to put a watch in a lighter – here’s a 1920s/30s Dunhill lighter – but it takes the old idea and makes it totally avant-garde.
It’s weird to say that an $80,000 watch lighter with a skeletonized movement is restrained, but for Franck Muller, it kind of is. It’s this bit of restraint that makes so many of Franck Muller’s early watches from the 1990s compelling for collectors more interested in traditional (whatever that means) watchmaking. Its early round chronographs, the Long Island, and Curvex are more vintage Patek than modern Hublot, winks to Franck Muller’s time as a master restorer. And after all, putting a watch inside a lighter is a quite traditional idea. Every so often, you might come across an Art Deco era lighter from Dunhill or a number of other makers that has a watch conveniently cut into its body. It’s this type of playful reference to the past, in a totally avant-garde form, that once made Franck Muller so ground-breaking.
Still, Franck Muller has never gotten much respect from the self-serious collector. Hover over “Brands” in the very menu bar above you, skim to “F,” and you’ll notice that Franck Muller is sinfully omitted. Modern Franck Muller and today’s watch collector seem to fundamentally misunderstand each other, and that’s just fine.
Petition to add “Franck Muller” to the Brands dropdown.
But the entire story of Franck Muller, the brand and the man, is one that should be told one day. It paved the way for a generation of independent watchmakers, and the industry is still riding that wave. (Who do you think was doing two-sided chronographs before Rexhepi?) He was maybe the first watchmaker to bring high-end watchmaking to pop culture. By the early 2000s, Franck Muller was on top of the watch world. But as is often the case, this enfant terrible attitude that made him a shooting star also made him burn out far too soon.
“While important luxury watch groups such as Swatch Group and Richemont publish declining figures for their 2002 and half 2003 results, Franck Muller Watchland, on the contrary, enjoys an excellent progression,” Europa Star wrote in August 2003, reporting that Franck Muller’s turnover had increased 54 percent the previous year. But just months after that, lawsuits and counter-lawsuits were being thrown around as the brand’s founding partners had a falling out. The dispute eventually reached a resolution, but Franck Muller the watchmaker never fully returned to the brand with his name on the door. At least in English-speaking archives, there’s not a full account of what happened, but words like “drugs,” “fake watches,” “alcohol,” and other such vices are tossed around enough in old newspapers and by those who know the story for me to know it’d make a hell of a documentary.
Master Lighter in black, with exploding luminous numerals.
While many watchmakers are still following in the footsteps of Franck Muller, it’s releases like the Dupont x Franck Muller Master Lighter that best capture the original spirit of the enfant terrible. Completely ridiculous and unapologetically opulent, but surprisingly thoughtful in execution.
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The S.T. Dupont x Franck Muller Master Lighter is limited to 88 pieces in each of four colors, all with a palladium-plated case (39 x 66 x 21.9mm) and Clous de Paris pattern. Inside is the FM caliber 1740-LI-STD, a manual-wind movement with three-day power reserve beating at 18,000 Hz and skeletonization visible on through the lighter’s sapphire side. A pipe cuts through the gas tank so that the hand axis can pass through the entire lighter; the hours and minutes are displayed on the dial side, with the seconds on the movement side. through Price: $66,000 for the white and blue dial versions, $68,500 for the black PVD, and $76,000 for the Color Dream.
Hodinkee
