Aikon
Line History
The Aikon was born in 2016 as a declared relaunch of the Calypso, a sporty-elegant model launched by Maurice Lacroix in 1990 and withdrawn from the catalog in 2003 after selling, according to the brand itself, over 100,000 units thanks to a value proposition that was particularly aggressive for its time. The Calypso's distinctive trait — a twelve-sided bezel marked by six metal arcs, visually fused with an integrated bracelet — is picked up almost identically on the Aikon, though updated in proportions and finishing for a contemporary audience. CEO Stéphane Waser described the move as an attempt to "bring Maurice Lacroix back into customers' minds," betting on a design recognizable at a glance more than on mechanical complication alone.
Commercial success came faster and on a larger scale than the brand itself had expected: within a few years of launch the Aikon came to represent, according to the company's own statements, over half of Maurice Lacroix's revenue, also driving the brand's overall perception among a younger, more urban audience. The line has gradually branched out into a broad family of executions: entry-level quartz versions starting at around 1,000 Swiss francs, automatics with the in-house ML115 caliber (based on a Sellita movement), chronographs, and the 2018 Aikon Automatic Skeleton, which instead houses the in-house ML234 caliber — normally reserved for the Masterpiece line — in a 45 mm case with an exposed movement.
In 2019 came the Aikon Venturer, a 43 mm dive variant water-resistant to 300 meters with a rotating ceramic bezel and the tool-free EasyChange strap system, designed to broaden the line's positioning beyond simply sporty-elegant wrist wear. In 2025, coinciding with the brand's fiftieth anniversary, Maurice Lacroix presents the Aikonic, a reinterpretation of the Aikon with a unidirectional carbon-fiber dial, ceramic bezel and crown, and a new in-house automatic caliber, the ML1000, capable of 60 hours of power reserve: further confirmation that the Aikon remains, almost ten years after launch, the brand's main laboratory for innovation.
Technical Specifications
Main Executions
The Aikon's six-arc bezel is not a new invention but an almost literal revival of the original 1990 Calypso: Maurice Lacroix deliberately chose not to reinvent the aesthetic language of its most historically successful collection, aiming instead to update its proportions, materials and movements for an audience thirty years later — a bet that the sales figures, with the Aikon now driving over half of the brand's revenue, appear to have amply paid off.