F.P.Journe just opened its eighth store at Bal Harbour Shops, following those in cities such as Geneva, Hong Kong, Paris and New York. To celebrate the opening, François-Paul Journe held a ribbon-cutting ceremony, where he was joined by the recently appointed CEO Amélie Lefevere, boutique director Richard Furnari, U.S. director Pierre Halimi and Bal Harbour Shops’ operating partner Matthew Whitman Lazenby.
Each boutique features a similar aesthetic, designed by François-Paul Journe to welcome visitors to penetrate an exclusive watch universe in a refined, elegant and comfortable environment. It offers a salon, a bar and a watch library where high horology collectors and aficionados can meet and share their mutual passion. Clients can admire the magnificent collection of F.P.Journe precision chronometers, under large black and white pictures of the Master and his watchmakers at work, and discover Limited Series and special editions manufactured in the grand horological tradition and reserved exclusively for the F.P.Journe Boutiques.
It’s clear once inside the F.P.Journe boutique that the brand is a celebration of one man’s passion for watchmaking—an interest that began for Francois-Paul at a very early age in Marseilles. As a teenager in Paris he apprenticed at his uncle’s antique watch and clock restoration shop where he was exposed to fine timepieces and became enamored with their complicated mechanisms and unique technology.
In 1994, François-Paul Journe started designing his vision of contemporary watchmaking and presented in 1999, a collection of wristwatches signed F.P.Journe with the Latin wording – Invenit et Fecit – meaning “invented and made”. It thereby certifies that each of the watches carrying his name results from an entirely original conception and rigorous craftsmanship.
F.P.Journe is the last independent watch manufacture managed by a master watchmaker. This gives him a genuine legitimacy and differentiates the brand from other watch companies. With a limited production of less than 900 timepieces per year, F.P.Journe has developed, outside of its own Boutiques, an extremely selective retailers’ network, carefully chosen to meet the brand’s technical requirements and criteria of excellence.
The innovative and exclusive F.P.Journe chronometers are divided in two lines: The Collection Souveraine is composed of high-precision wristwatches with manual winding. They feature exclusive and technically innovative complicated mechanisms.
The Collection Octa is a line of wristwatches with mechanical winding presenting a unique and innovative concept, with an exceptional power reserve of more than five days, over 120 hours, and a unique calibre for all models. Each presents the same thickness, whatever the complication offers.
The new boutique opening also presented an opportunity to introduce the brand’s newest watch to the market, the Chronomètre Optimum. Watch aficionados will appreciate its exceptional components brought together for the first time in one watch: two barrels in parallel, the constant-force remontoire, the new EBHP revolutionary escapement, and the natural dead beat second.
The aesthetics of the hour, minute and small second displays and of the 70-hour power reserve are in perfect harmony with the visible wheel of the constant-force remontoir on the face of the dial. The back of the 18ct rose Gold movement reveals, through the sapphire back, a surprising natural dead beat second defined by a seconds circle screwed onto the movement's bridges.
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