WHEN VAN CLEEF & ARPELS introduced the Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux in 2010, the maison did much more than release its latest novelty timepiece. It had defined a new category of luxury haute horlogerie known as the poetic complication – exceptional timepieces that utilised traditional mechanical complications for the sake of emotion, rather than function.
Still in production today, Pont des Amoureux features a romantic arch bridge on which a pair of lovers meet for a kiss at the stroke of midnight. To enact this beautiful scene, Van Cleef & Arpels relied on a classical retrograde mechanism that has been modified to animate the couple more realistically. The maison also demonstrated
