Why This Historically Significant Watch Is Missing a Minute Hand

Watch brands love to lean on archival designs. Take the Timex Marlin or TAG Heuer Formula 1 — two trendy timepieces with roots in the ’60s and ’80s, respectively.

One French watchmaker has a catalog that goes much further back in time, and it has every other brand beat by a wide margin when it comes to historical significance.

Breguet

That brand is none other than Breguet, founded by Abraham-Louis Breguet, someone who could reasonably be referred to as the Henry Ford of watchmaking.

After founding his eponymous company in 1775, he invented a series of mechanisms and business practices that paved the way for the modern watch industry.

Before Breguet, horology was an artisan trade that created products on commission without uniformity.

Then the company invented a pocket watch that could be replicated on scale and a business model known as Souscription, which we would recognize as akin to crowdsourcing.

Breguet

To celebrate the brand’s 250th anniversary, Breguet has reproduced the Souscription pocket watch as a wristwatch using production methods that get as close as possible to Breguet’s 18th century workshop.

What’s more, it’s also missing a minute hand. To understand why, you need to go back centuries.

Wearable history

Abraham-Louis Breguet was Swiss but lived in France for most of his life. In 1797, he established a clockworks company in Paris, known at first as Quai de l’Horloge, before it took on the inventor’s name in subsequent generations.

He is best known for inventing the tourbillon in 1801, but before that, he pretty much invented the modern watch industry through a series of brilliant engineering and marketing innovations.

Breguet

At first, Breguet’s workshop operated in the traditional manner, taking commissions as they came. But in 1793, the French Revolution upended societal order and Breguet fled to his native Switzerland until 1795.

While back in the heartland of horological engineering, Breguet devised a method to sustain his business by creating more affordable watches and an easier way to pay for them. Clients could pay a quarter of the price upfront, giving the workshop capital to operate. Breguet called the system Souscription, which is the root for subscription in English.

Breguet

Breguet’s other revolutionary idea was to design a simplified watch that could be replicated at scale, which would have been sacrosanct to the artisans of previous generations. It allowed his team to build an inventory of watches before they were sold.

Breguet’s business savvy didn’t stop there. He turned to the burgeoning print marketing medium to promote and explain his unprecedented product. As far as historians know, the Souscription was the first watch ever advertised in print.

Breguet

The Souscription sold 700 units over a thirty-year run, while typical watchmakers produced a fraction of that number in a lifetime. Breguet established the first uniform design language as a form of marketing in watchmaking.

Breguet watches had distinctive dial numbers and tracks, brand logos and placement, and hand and case shapes. Hidden signatures were even added to dials to distinguish the real thing from the growing threat of counterfeits.

Elegance in simplicity

The most striking feature of the Classique Souscription 2025 is the single hand on the dial. It follows a 12-hour track, with each numeral marking an hour and each dash a five-minute increment.

At the turn of the 19th century, when most people relied on church bells and clock towers to be aware of the time, this was more than sufficient.

Breguet

To produce this 250th anniversary watch, Breguet utilized as many 18th century watchmaking techniques as possible. The Case back is engraved with vintage tools, the movement is hand etched and the ghost signature on the dial is achieved with a diamond-point pantograph exactly like the type used in the 1700s.

The dial is a scaled-down replica of the original Souscription, made of white grand feu enamel over a gold base with the logo, script numerals and 12-hour track done in black petit feu enamel. The single hand is made of steel, blued in the centuries-old method with an open flame, and hand-bent.

Breguet

The VS00 movement, visible through the case back, is a replica of Breguet’s hand-wound movement used in the original Souscription. However, the movement and case use a newly developed alloy called Breguet gold, which blends in silver, copper and palladium to prevent corrosion and discoloration.

Complete with a blue crocodile leather strap, the Classique Souscription 2025 is a beautiful homage to the pocket watch that beta tested the entire industry.

It is impressive enough that Abraham-Louis Breguet’s brand is still in business, let alone that his watch design still holds up in a wrist adaptation over two centuries later.

Availability and pricing

The Classique Souscirption 2025 is available now from Breguet for $48,700.

This anniversary piece is not a limited edition and enters the brand’s permanent collection.

Briguet

Breguet Classique Souscription 2025

Specs

Case Size	40mm
Movement	Breguet caliber VS00 manual winding
Water Resistance	None

• $48,700 at Breguet

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