Vacheron Constantin

Vacheron Constantin was founded in Geneva in 1755 by the young watchmaker Jean-Marc Vacheron, who that year took on his first apprentice: an act the manufacture today considers its birth certificate and which allows it to claim the title of the world's oldest watch manufacture in uninterrupted operation since its founding. This claim is widely repeated by the specialist press and by the company itself, but it should be read with one clarification: other historic brands, such as Blancpain, claim an earlier founding date (1735), but with production that has seen interruptions over the centuries; Vacheron Constantin's distinction specifically concerns continuous production under the same name, without interruption, and not the founding date alone.

The company remained in the hands of Jean-Marc Vacheron's descendants for several generations until, in 1819, entrepreneur and watch merchant François Constantin went into partnership with Jacques-Barthélémi Vacheron, the founder's grandson, creating the company name "Vacheron & Constantin" from which the brand's current name derives. The manufacture's historic motto is linked to this period, taken from a letter Constantin wrote to Vacheron in 1819: "Faire mieux si possible, ce qui est toujours possible" ("Do better if possible, and that is always possible"), a phrase the company still quotes today as a summary of its philosophy.

In 1880 the manufacture registered the Croix de Malte (Maltese Cross) as its emblem, a symbol that would become the brand's distinctive logo: according to company tradition, the design was inspired by the shape of a mechanical component — the device used to regulate the barrel's "winding crown", observed under a microscope — whose outline indeed recalled that of a Maltese cross.

Having come through the 20th century amid economic difficulties (particularly during the Great Depression) and changes of ownership, in 1936 the company was taken over by Geneva entrepreneur Georges Ketterer, who ensured its survival and craft continuity; on his death leadership passed to his son Jacques Ketterer. On the latter's death, in 1987, the majority of the company passed to Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, former Saudi Arabian oil minister — a change of ownership often confused, in some inaccurate summaries, with joining the Richemont group, which instead happened only later. It was in fact in 1996 that Vacheron Constantin was acquired outright by the Vendôme Luxury Group, the watch and jewellery hub created by the Rupert family which in 1988 had given rise to what would become Compagnie Financière Richemont: since that precise year, 1996, the Geneva manufacture has operated permanently within the Richemont group, of which it remains one of the flagship brands in the watches and jewellery division today.