Paris-based, Swiss-made, Chanel-backed, military-endorsed Bell & Ross is the coolest watch brand you… almost know. Three decades young (believe us, that really is young for the rheumy-eyed world of fine mechanical timekeeping), the brand is a posterboy for neo-modernist horology (see also Nomos, Tudor), while literally staying under the radar as supplier to all manner of covert military sorts.
You may need an intro to the name and the story, but what’s become the brand’s signature is unmistakeable: a circular analogue dial, square-framed by a case inspired by slot-in cockpit instruments, screwed down at each corner.
Up until recently, and from the very start with the help of Germany’s own ‘mil-spec’ uhrmacher Sinn, Bell & Ross’s offering has had round watches at its core. But that side is being phased out in light of the square ‘Instrument’ line and the BR 03/05 lines’ success with hipsters and architects alike, while still fulfilling special ops on the wrists of Aéronavale fighter pilots, gendarmerie SWAT teams, plus, infamously, the French president.
“There are brand ambassadors you pay for,” enthuses Carlos Rosillo over a Zoom call from Paris HQ (he’s the ‘Ross’ to schoolfriend and co-founder Bruno ‘Bell’ Belamich), “and there are the ambassadors you have to serve.
“We are proud to serve so many elite teams, and their wearing Bell & Ross proves we are fulfilling our professional values of readability and reliability. So it made me smile when the BBC, even Donald Trump commented on Emmanuel Macron wearing a Bell & Ross last year!”
Rosillo is referring to the social-media outrage following Macron’s removal of his “luxury” watch midway through a French television interview in March. Despite accusations that he was “arrogant and contemptuous” of public concerns, churlishly unstrapping a watch “worth €80,000” beneath the table in plain evidence of his being out of touch, he simply took it off because it was banging on the table. Plus, it was a simple three-handed BR V1-92 model worth (and well-worth, for that matter) €2,400.
“Macron’s watch was a gift: from his presidential security service, GSPR,” Rosillo chuckles. “They wanted us to make a watch for their boss! [Instead of being controversial] it proved how well Bell & Ross continues to serve demanding, elite clients like GSPR themselves.”
With thirty years’ distance from his and Belamich’s beginnings, piggybacking the manufacturing nous of their friends at Sinn in Frankfurt, an expansiveness lends itself to Rosillo. The traditional Swiss industry was still dusting down its knees in the early nineties after decades of quartz tech decimation, so you could almost interpret it as sheer relief that he made their outré exploit stick; let alone the ‘square’ thing of 2006, which would become very much ‘the thing’.
“Starting out, it’s easy to consider that being ‘you’ in an established industry is difficult, that it handicaps you, etcetera, etcetera,” Rosillo ponders, “but I like to think of our brand as a separate human being. And at the start, there is nothing happier than a newborn baby, especially when it has fond parents.”
That ‘fondness’ translates to how he and Belamich nurtured Bell & Ross’s brand from the outset. “We established the logo, the collections, our baby. And then we grew the family, surrounding it with love: a godfather in Lothar, who had just bought Sinn, and then a godmother in Chanel, who invested in 1997.”
The BR 05 Blue Steel, whose 24-hour ‘GMT’ hand makes it the perfect travelling companion
“The trouble was that when our baby arrived,” he recalls, “everyone from Le Figaro, to Vogue, the FT… they all thought we were this big brand. We were, as the French say, ‘bien né’, or ‘well born’. They thought the people behind Bell & Ross were, like, NASA, not just two guys!”
Still a major stakeholder, Chanel enabled Bell & Ross to move from Sinn early on, into a gleaming new factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds. This is the high-altitude ‘cradle’ of modern watchmaking in Switzerland’s Jura mountains, next-door to the fashion giant’s own ceramic case facility and down the road from legends like TAG Heuer, Breitling and Paris’s other grande maison, Cartier.
“In the beginning we didn’t know much about Swiss culture. But we respected it. Combining a bit of Parisian creativity and coolness with their knowledge brought the best of both worlds. We are now well-respected by them, too.”
Monsieur Rosillo is putting things lightly. Wind your way further down the valley from Chaux-de-Fonds’ gridded art nouveau streets and you’ll find, nestled in the verdant slopes of dairy pastures and conifers, the quainter town of Le Locle. Rambling but by no means less star-studded, the HQs of Tissot, Zenith and Ulysse Nardin have a new neighbour in ‘Kenissi Manufacture’.
Ostensibly, it’s a multi-million-franc breakaway into genuine autonomy for Rolex’s ‘little brother’ Tudor. But yet again, Chanel has been typically canny and ever-so-slightly philanthropic, buying a 20 percent stake in 2018, revamping its iconic ceramic ‘J12’ with Kenissi’s futureproof mechanics and by association opening the door to Bell & Ross (winning a client in Breitling, no less).
No longer wholly dependent on the Swatch Group’s ‘workhorse’ white-label movements made by their ETA monopoly, for a slight premium more and more of Bell & Ross’s catalogue comes kitted-out with lengthily guaranteed powerhouses of modern micro-tech. And, crucially, less supply-chain uncertainty.
“We have a set of standards here that don’t exist for other ‘off-the-rack’ companies,” says the guide for my visit. “All our movements are chronometer-certified [for +4/–6 second-a-day precision], the medium and large movements have 70 hours power reserve, the small has 50.” There are some perks reserved just for Tudor – silicon hairsprings are exclusive to it and the ‘Master Chronometer’ certified movements are Tudor only, too.
Bell & Ross will always be proudly Parisian in spirit and élan; but at just 30, to be ticking more and more to the tune of this calibre of Swiss innovation is everything, presidential endorsement ou non.