BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
One of the greatest tools the watch industry has at its disposal is storytelling. Everyone who’s into watches has a story about them; maybe it’s buying their first Rolex after so many years of dreaming, or inheriting their dad’s beloved Casio that’s been worn, loved, and treasured. It’s also about using watches to tell a story, and Czapek is a brand very accustomed to (and very good at) telling stories through its watches. In September 2026, they’re introducing a special limited edition version of their Promenade model inspired by the works of Boris Vian (1920-1959).
Boris Vian, 1947 – Photo credit: D.R.
Vian was a surrealist and what we might call a ‘polymath’: a person with a very wide but detailed range of knowledge across many subjects. He is perhaps best remembered for his writing published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. However, he was also a songwriter, a jazz musician, and an engineer – L’Écume des Jours was one of his more notable written works. In L’Écume des Jours (translated as Froth on the Daydream), a young rich man struggles to find a lover until he meets a beautiful young woman at a party and falls in love with her. Romance blossoms, but so does a waterlily blossom within her lung, which is apparently an illness. The only way to reduce the symptoms is to surround the woman with flowers, but these cost so much that the young man loses all his money and can’t buy her the flowers she needs; eventually she dies, and her death is so sad that the man’s pet mouse commits suicide because of it. I said he was a surrealist.
Inspired by Boris Vian’s work (and quite possibly whatever substances he’d taken), Czapek has crafted the Promenade L’Écume des Jours. The water lily from the story has replaced the usual small seconds hand; it is crafted from titanium and then hand-painted to bring the lily to life. Incidentally, water lilies are some of my most favourite flowers; they’re beautiful. Anyway, another theme I haven’t mentioned yet is the set of piano keys around the dial edge, inspired by an invention by the young man in Vian’s story called the ‘pianocktail’, which conjures a cocktail to match the mood of the music played on it. Czapek worked with two dial partners to get this right: Donzé Cadrans created the base enamel dial in Czapek’s Goutte d’Eau ‘water droplet’ style, and MD’Art used a laser to make space for the mother-of-pearl ring, into which the black piano keys were hand-painted. A jade disk is laser-cut with the seconds track, then placed on the dial with the water lily on top.
Behind all of this craftsmanship sits the self-winding calibre SXH5.1, a variation of Czapek’s calibre SXH5 – you can distinguish them by the placement of the seconds hand, which is central on the dial for the SXH5 and offset in the SXH5.1, as seen in this latest piece. Czapek designed and conceived this calibre in-house, with components produced externally, and they’re then taken to Czapek’s manufacture for examination, final assembly, and testing.
The calibre SHX5.1 has a clean, modern look, with a micro-rotor made from recycled 950 platinum. It features 26 jewels across seven skeletonised bridges, 127 components, and a 60-hour power reserve. Plenty of sandblasting, bevelling, and graining give the movement its good looks to match the dial side. This is all set within a stainless steel case measuring 38mm x 10.8mm and with 50m water resistance; it comes on a dark blue nubuck leather strap, although a mesh bracelet is also available.
This new piece shows that we never really know what Czapek is up to next. I certainly wasn’t expecting to write about a French surrealist and his book, which sounds odd but charming. Each watch will be delivered in a special box with a copy of the novel that inspired its creation, which I understand is a personal favourite of Czapek’s CEO, Xavier de Roquemaurel. The price for one of the 18 watches being produced is $37,700 before taxes.
