BRUNO BELAMICH BELL & ROSS CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Bell & Ross has always been an uncompromising avant-garde brand, but lately vintage seems to be becoming increasingly important.

Each year we have to introduce novelties… this is a big, big part of our business. Everybody wants novelties – journalists, customers, retailers. After 10 years working on the vintage line, we thought it was a good time to redesign it, to evolve and fine tune. So, for the third generation of the collection we changed the size of the watches, making them 1mm smaller. It’s not much, but it’s important because, after many years of supersized ones, there’s a demand for “normal” watches.

That millimetre makes a big difference.

I agree, it doesn’t fit small. So that’s why we have two sizes in this new collection: 41mm and 38.5mm. For most of the market it’s a small watch, but 30-or-so years ago, 38mm would have been a big watch for a man. We have also changed the lugs and made them more rounded and introduced a new stainless-steel bracelet with small links, which is very comfortable. The inspiration comes from the 1960s and 1970s.

We have introduced different versions – a basic