THE ART OF TIME

VARUN GODINHO WORDS

Vacheron Constantin recently opened its second boutique in Doha at the Place Vendôme mall. It’s art that is the major highlight at this landmark space

Vacheron Constantin is a 267-yearold watchmaking bulwark, and is present in boutiques around the world. Here in the Middle East, it is found in several locations. In the UAE, for example, it recently reopened its newly renovated flagship in Dubai Mall. Over in another GCC country where its watches are very well received, Qatar, Vacheron opened its second boutique in Doha last month, located in the prestigious Place Vendôme Qatar.

Vacheron opened this boutique with its partner Alfardan Jewellery Qatar on September 22. It has two VIP rooms available for private meetings with key customers. It’s here where you can learn about some of its novelties including the yellow-gold Ref 222, the salmon-dial platinum-cased Traditionnelle Perpetual Calendar Chronograph, or even the open-worked Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin Skeleton.

But while discovering Vacheron’s watches are the priority at the new boutique, taking in its stunning art is a pursuit that comes in at a close second priority. The watchmaker has commissioned Ahmed AlMaadheed – the only Qatari artist to have ever exhibited in the prestigious Qatar Museum – to create two exclusive art pieces for the boutique.

AlMaadheed’s bespoke works for the boutique include North (2022) and Hard To Get (2022). North takes inspiration of the sea and interweaves rare sea creatures with some of the maison’s timepieces. His second art piece, Hard To Get, is an image of the Qatari seabed with more marine life mixed with timepieces – as Vacheron says, the journey of discovery in the artwork “parallels the journey which a collector would have in the boutique, making the painting a metaphorical deep dive into the brand’s iconography”.

Vacheron has been extensively linked with the arts in previous years too – back in 2016 it partnered with the Musée du Louvre in Paris on a restoration of an 18th-century clock named La Création du Monde presented to King Louis XV in 1754. More recently, this year, the Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art collection, Tribute To Great Civilisations is a series of four timepieces, each limited to just five pieces, and is a design collaboration with the Louvre. Each watch is a reference to a piece in the museum’s antiquities collection – Lion de Darius, the Grand sphinx de Tanis, Buste d’Auguste and Victoire de Samothrace.

Here in Vacheron’s second boutique in Doha, the link to art is a natural one and will be an additional draw when taking in the timepieces from one of the world’s finest watchmaking brands. Qatar itself too is quickly building one of the region’s foremost collections of public artworks. “In celebration of the opening of Vacheron Constantin boutique at Place Vendôme Qatar, we are delighted to strengthen the constant commitment of our maison to the Qatari local community,” said Christophe Ramel, Middle East Regional Brand Director of Vacheron Constantin.

At the Vacheron boutique in Place Vendôme, it is the watches that might get you into the door – but, it’s the art that will keep you there.

FROM TOP: The North painting in the boutique; Hard To Get by artist Ahmed AlMaadheed; Vacheron Constantin’s new boutique in Place Vendôme