The year was 1995. In cinemas, a face-painted Mel Gibson played Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace in the epic Braveheart; a young ingénue named Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz navigated the precarious shoals of a Beverly Hills high school in Clueless; Martin Scorsese gave us the third installment of his Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci quadrilogy with the incendiary Casino; and Michael Mann set screens ablaze with what I contend is the greatest crime drama in cinematic history, Heat. But in the watch industry, the Swiss mechanical watch revival was only just gaining momentum.
The year before, Günter Blümlein had unveiled his vision for German watchmaking to contend with the Swiss horological juggernauts in the form of the Lange 1 and Pour le Mérite Tourbillon. In 1995, Officine Panerai, a cult Italian watch brand formerly the tool of the nation’s naval diving unit, was just starting to gain mass appeal through its collaboration with actor Sylvester Stallone on the famous “Sly Tech” model worn in his film Daylight. Yet by 1995, Gerd-Rüdiger Lang, a watchmaker turned entrepreneur, was already 12 years into the highly successful trajectory of his brand Chronoswiss.
Says Alain Silberstein, who caught the wave of revival and made his watchmaking debut in the 1980s: “One of my best friendships in the watch industry was with Gerd-R. Lang. People talk about many individuals being responsible for the return of mechanical watchmaking, but to me he was one of the most instrumental. Beyond that, he was a real visionary in terms of design and the
