Krayon presents its first women’s watch: “Lady Anywhere”

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Krayon “Lady Anywhere”: the independent brand Krayon takes another step, opening a bit wider the door into the world of great mechanical complications. For the discerning woman. This first feminine incursion into the world of mechanical complexity according to Krayon stages the ballet of the stars and the measure of time against the backdrop of a personalised, refined woman’s ephemeris.

A personalised ephemeris, poetry and romance in time and place,
which can be set for anywhere on the planet,
connecting the owner with her own intimate history.

Thus, mornings and evenings, never at the same hours, are experienced in a most personal manner.
As the days vary, so do extent and colour of the large peripheral ring on the dial
of Lady Anywhere vary, and with it, the face of the watch.

Lady Anywhere is Freedom. Because deep down, there is no place more important than the one you call your own, the one you see, you remember or hold in your heart.

Lady Anywhere is the first to offer a woman the possibility of wearing an ephemeris that can be set to her personal wishes, indicating the exact time of sunrise or sunset at a location as chosen by the owner of the watch. When the location becomes more: a place in connection with her intimate history as a woman, her desires and her secrets. Anywhere on the planet.

Beyond the elegant dial and the case gracefully engraved with blossoming roses along its circumference, extraordinary mechanical complexity. Designed to beautifully share the 24 hours of the life of a woman who is modern, active and a connoisseuse of Haute Horlogerie, Lady Anywhere is as naturally in tune with city fashion as with an evening gown. A distinctive timepiece that demonstrates, through exquisite hand finishing, the unique artisanship of an independent Swiss watchmaker.

For the watch owner, time is something intrinsically personal. For watchmakers, it is a dimension to be measured objectively. Krayon reinterprets its hallmark complication in a personalised ephemeris for the woman: Lady Anywhere unites the immeasurable and the measurable through the complication that is its raison d’être: the moment when day and night transition from one to the other, the time of sunrise and the time of sunset.

Time, so personal and natural.

By providing this information, Lady Anywhere by Krayon is a watchmaker’s answer to a philosophical challenge. What makes it so singular? The watch displays the ephemeris, more precisely the time of sunrise and sunset, at any point on the globe chosen by its wearer. It can be the wearer’s location at that precise moment, or the place of birth, or the place where loved ones wait, the place where dreams are made or remembered. It can be Anywhere.

The moments and places that matter are never recorded on a standardised watch, or even by a classic complication. These essentials are personal information, defined in the circle of relations and personal memory, never before given such a deeper meaning by a watch.

When the sun rises or sets is a decisive moment of the day. When nature awakens at dawn, or prepares for rest at dusk, when it comes closest to its pristine state and allows itself to be approached. It is the time when animals drink, fish feed and predators hunt. It is the time of our connection with Earth.

This emotional dimension of time and space, at the intersection of an intimate yet concrete landscape, is Krayon’s vocation. This watchmaker’s interpretation of time takes the form of a timekeeper that goes beyond conventions and habits. It is like each morning and evening, never identical, always lived in a personal way. Lady Anywhere‘s large peripheral ring separates the day into two sections, joining its own rhythm to the rhythm of the wearer’s life. As the day evolves, its length and colour change, and with them the face of the watch.

A matchless complication.

Watches with universal time or astronomical indications impose specific cities, chosen by arbitrary conventions deeply ingrained in watchmaking custom. Lady Anywhere by Krayon takes the opposite tack, espousing its wearer’s unique vision, aspirations and dreams. It is the logical progression from Everywhere, a ‘hypercomplication’ capable of indicating the time of sunset and sunrise anywhere in the world – it was awarded the Innovation Prize at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) in 2018. Anywhere, building on the same patent, goes to the core of a personalised ephemeris.

Krayon’s Lady Anywhere indicates the hours and minutes with dedicated hands, placed in the centre of a dial that seems suspended at the centre of the watch. It is surrounded by an annular zone upon which a sun circulates in perpetual motion, indicating the time over 24 hours. The annular zone has two sectors: day (pink) and night (dark blue). The respective lengths of the sectors change constantly, indicating by their position the sunrise and sunset times that can be read from the rehaut.

These periods are all intimately linked to latitude. The North-South position determines the length of the day, which is equal to the night at the equator and gradually expands towards the ‘white night’ near the Arctic Circle. To integrate this geographical factor, Krayon devised a mechanical positioning system based on racks and yokes rather than a fixed, complex and not very efficient cam. At the customer’s request, a Krayon watchmaker will adjust the movement. The setting can easily be modified, and as often as desired.

The relative position of the two sapphire discs is determined not only by the reference position, but also by the calendar. Here, Krayon’s Lady Anywhere indicates the date and month with a hand-counter at 6 o’clock. It is a simple calendar, for which every month lasts 31 days. It requires only five quick, straightforward annual adjustments, which can be made directly with the crown and in both directions

When simplicity is self-evident.

A concept all its own, full of meaning and aesthetic details, the design of Lady Anywhere by Krayon is implicitly linked to the nature of its functionality.

Lady Anywhere is an ideal of beauty, a marriage of pure elegance, legibility and technical sophistication in 432 components. The second opus in a family of unusual ‘hypercomplications’, Lady Anywhere is the natural next step from Everywhere, and at the same its opposite. Seemingly simpler, not only in its appearance, but in its use as well, more balanced. Lady Anywhere means Freedom. After all, no place is more important than where you are now, where your eyes and thoughts roam, where your memory or your heart takes you.

Lady Anywhere is available in 18K rose gold, with cream white and pink the dominant tones. The elegant shape of the 39 mm diameter case is highlighted by a flange along the bezel’s underside and over the back cover. The hollow thus created further emphasises how the thinness of the case, itself finely hand-engraved with rose blossoms along the circumference. With an elegant thickness of just 9 mm, Lady Anywhere by Krayon remains eminently wearable. The gadroon on the applied, subtly plunging lugs further accentuates their slimness.

Aesthetic sensibility, rich in meaning.

The dial shows the same motif as on Everywhere and Anywhere, the result of a long search for a distinctive aesthetic, and it is echoed on the face of the crown. What you see is an orb with parallels and meridians, imaginary longitudes and latitudes, an apt symbol for the global scope of Krayon’s complications. The vanishing point is centred on the date at 6 o’clock. This symbolic pole is composed of two snailed areas. The hour markers are distinctive, pyramid-shaped appliques with a triangular base, identical in shape to the Y in Krayon’s identity.

Greatest care was given to the day and night discs. The two rings are cut from sapphire. One is hand-painted in dark blue, the other in light pink. On the former, Super-Luminova™ stars stand out in the firmament. High above, the sun follows its course, each one of its rays unique, painstakingly finished in a subtle diamond polishing process that is technically quite complex. Beyond the discs, the inclined and colour-coordinated rehaut serves as a 24-hour scale.

Anywhere – a dream come true.

As with Everywhere, Lady Anywhere’s calibre was also meticulously conceived and constructed by Rémi Maillat, founding watchmaker of Krayon. It is a movement designed and dedicated in 2020, offering a power reserve of 86 hours. Though of a certain girth to accommodate both the day and night discs, it is quite thin in view of its complexity. At only 5 mm, it allows for a case thickness of just 9 mm.

The regulating mechanism for the day and night discs is located at 6 o’clock. Immediately setting the Lady Anywhere movement apart from all others, it shows the intricacy of racks and yokes, with a distinctive screw system in the centre. On either side, two discreet screws facilitate adjustment by the watchmaker.

It is a hand-wound calibre, designed in the tradition of classic movements. Its barrel is coupled to an elegant long blade ratchet click. All perforations are countersunk. The shape of the bridges is particularly adorned, made of solid and fine lines, an inviting canvas for the art of manual bevelling. The numerous hand-worked inward and outward angles establish Lady Anywhere on a par with the finest of contemporary executions.

Three eventful years.

More than a watchmaker, Rémi Maillat, founder of Krayon, is a watch design engineer. His is a precious talent: the ability to materialise mathematical calculations into fantastic watchmaking creations. With disconcerting simplicity. Whether it is to make real the aspirations of discerning clients or to give substance to his own imagination, this gifted engineer truly masters the technical complexities of the art of watchmaking. Always true to the spirit of simplicity, to him a workable concept can always be sketched with a pencil.

In 2017, Rémi Maillat presented Everywhere, his first creation. A year later, he followed up with the bespoke Everywhere Horizon, which won the Best Watchmaking Innovation of the Year award at the 2018 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.

Be it on land or at sea, it is the sun’s course through the sky that denotes the passage of time – and allows it to be measured. Krayon’s approach was born from a dream: a mechanical movement, adjustable by hand, that would make it possible to read the time of sunrise and sunset at any point on the globe. Rémi Maillat made the dream come true by succeeding with a challenge heretofore unmet in watchmaking: a universal mechanical calculator of the exact time of sunrise and sunset.

As a designer cum engineer, Rémi Maillat is inhabited by the particular spark that drives true creative spirits. Everyday experiences still push him to push boundaries, to imagine new watchmaking solutions. Nature never ceases to inspire him, especially when he can practise his passions – other than watchmaking – such as scuba diving and freediving. It was, actually, the fact of getting up too early one morning to explore the seabed that gave him the idea of a watch with a universal sunrise and sunset function… In Rémi Maillat’s hands, mathematical abstraction becomes an instrument, like a draftsman’s pen, for developing new and useful complications. Today’s watchmaker in the truest sense of the word.

In 2020, Rémi Maillat presented Anywhere, a timepiece uncompromisingly faithful to the concept of the art of the singular measurement of time. A marvellous synthesis of mathematics, artistic watchmaking creation, the poetry of details and a truly philosophical dimension.

2021 saw the birth of Krayon’s first women’s watch: Lady Anywhere is a timepiece as harmonious and poetic in its design as it is complex and virtuoso in its making. A personalised ephemeris, poetry and romance in time and place.