Post pics of your watches Part II

What TF said.

Old French watch company. Very popular there. Innovated in Divers and Electronics and many Swiss brands like Breitling and Blancpain used LIP to distribute their watches. In the early 70's as sales drooped and industrial action threatened to shut them down, they decided to bring in a load of industrial and graphic designers to really rev things up. Which it did. It saved the company for a time, but the digital watch fad finally killed them off.

In the Swiss industry you had Genta, but he was a major outlier in being known as a "name", though not so much at the time and he penned numerous designs for which he got no credit. All the most iconic watches had a designer or designers but can anyone name the guys who designed the Rolex Sub, the Omega Speedie etc? The idea of bringing in "name" designers was unknown in the watch industry, especially bringing in designers from outside the industry.

The above watch was designed by one Roger Tallon. He also designed the new LIP logo by reducing it down to four vertical lines. Recognisable in France, clearly not so much now. It was labelled the Mach 2000, where he explored the very shapes that make up a watch and went nuts ran with that. So the crown became a smooth ball sucked into a negative space and the case was lugless and asymmetrical, the dial offset, with the hands and dial reduced to their simplest forms. Pure modernist industrial design and as untraditional as you can get. And very French.

The engineering is interesting too. Machined alloy case and everything is press fit, but the tolerances are so tight they could claim it as "waterproof". And he was able to achieve that using their existing and old fashioned machinery. They came with electronic movements and quartz and even an LED digital(all but the LED were their own in house movements too). The Quartz are rarer. My one is a preproduction example with a silver rehaut which the production run lost. They weren't cheap watches at the time either, but they were big sellers.

When he applied the same design to a chronograph he went even more colourful.



The above(handwind mechanical) were a hit beyond France and were popular in the US of A. He did a couple of other watch designs for them.

He also designed France's first high speed train TGV 001, both the outside and interior. He even coined the name Eurostar for another train he had a hand in.



Motorbikes



Even one of the first portable TV's and certainly the coolest one IMHO. When all other TV designs would have the screen as a separate thing, not him, and all the better for it.



Furniture, office equipment, interiors, typefaces and watches. He did the lot. An interesting and talented chap.

I'd heard they had been bought by a small outfit who were producing their Nautic-Ski Diver(only bigger and automatic), but I didn't realise they had a range like that. Not too surprised in France, because they would have been as well known a brand as Renault for most of the 20th century.

The design to the right and left are also Tallon designs. Actually they're oddball in another way too. They are the only watches from the past I can think of other than WW2 B-Uhrs that have been brought into the present as reissues that are smaller than the originals. My Mach 2000 from '75 is 40mm top to bottom and 45mm side to side. Not only is it very different looking t'is massive too like.

Cyclingtourist wrote: »

Still I've got this feeling that you'd need to Lip-sync your lifestyle to the watch. Imagine they mostly appeal to people who already have homes full of designer chairs, Philippe Stark kitchenalia and wear round glasses with thick orange frames. I mean the type who wear these watches as opposed to people who just collect them.

Could be. I would say that's the case nowadays alright, though less so in France itself. Their popularity originally would have been more a this is The Future type deal when that was more a thing. Funny enough the same designer also designed a pair of round glasses with very thick frame in yellow. I did a bit of a deep dive on the guy last night and it's crazy how many areas of design he was involved in and successfully too. He had 200 patents to his name, but unlike Starck didn't seek out or translate into the English speaking world. Well the world not so long ago was still quite regional and French design was always just that little bit different and even more regional than most. Well modernism arose in Paris like many art and design movements do, neatly bookended by the Eiffel Tower of 1887 and the Pompidou centre or 1977. Now such things as you note are relegated to collectors or lifestylists, often ironically. Hipsters of a vanished dream

somebody_else wrote: »

Funny enough, it is not LIP but homage of it.

The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms had an odd birth alright. A French military diver after trying other contemporary waterproof models and deciding they weren't up to it came up with the design; 42mm, elapsed time bezel, buckets of lume and 90 metres(50 fathoms) depth rating. He found it hard to get any manufacturers interested in it(though I suspect a couple were "inspired" to make their own), but the head of Blancpain was a keen diver so they produced it. They first sold them to militaries like Israel, France of course, America, Germany and a couple of others, mostly through Spirotechnique who were the French navy suppliers and later went on to make their own dive watch designs.

Civilian sales weren't a priority. Well in a market that was almost exclusively small "dress watches" massive for the time tool watches weren't nearly the trend they are today. Even most chronographs were gold or gold plated and small enough. You wore something like a dive watch when you were actually diving. Showing up to dinner or an office job wearing one would be akin to walking in wearing a dive compass and a snorkel. Sport diving was beginning to take off so they were eventually sold through outlets for that. Aqualung was the first. Jacques Cousteau's brand of diving gear. Those examples have Aqualung on the dial.

LIP were approached first as they were France's biggest watch outlet but somebody in their office turned it down on the logic of "why would anyone a portable clock? No future in that". When LIP's CEO an avid sportsman finally found out about it he contacted the head of Blancpain who he was actually friends with and they started to sell them with LIP on the dial. Then Abercrombie of all people got in on the act. They were a retailer of outdoor equipment so 50 fathoms got Abercrombie on their dials(you could quite comfortably write a book on the early dial variants).

It's kinda mad to think when Blancpain(bought off the shelf by Jean Claude Biver in the 80's after it went bust) is now a big luxury brand with equally big prices, but originally their most famous watch was never sold through jewellers and wasn't considered luxury. Quite the opposite.

LIP had their own divers later on. The Nautic Ski, aimed at as the name suggests sea goers and skiers(The Lip family were avid skiers). Both disciplines that need ruggedness and waterproofing. First they were mechanical LIP movements but when they developed their electric movement they were put into them using SuperCompressor cases. Here's my second series one from 69/70.

redlead wrote: »

Okay, 24 hours ago I never heard of Lip and now I want one bad . I love this one. God this hobby!

The LIP Nautic-Ski's run from about 500-1000 depending on model and condition. The very first one from 66 with the black dial and LIP on the two crowns would be near that top end, my one above with the blue dial in good nick figure around 6-700 mark. The later ones in the heavier looking compressor cases around the 500 mark. That's ebay private buyers values, for dealers add at least 30% or more to those figures. Had a quick root around and here's a nice looking one for 550 inc postage.