ArtyA’s Yvan Arpa and his Personal Relationship with Time and Watches

Twelve on Time is a conversation series that invites leading personalities from the watch industry to step beyond their work and speak more personally about their relationship with time, creativity, and craft. Through a set of twelve questions, the column aims to lift the veil on both the individual and their perspective on watchmaking – revealing not only how they see watches, but also how they see themselves within a culture shaped by precision, heritage, and emotion. Today, we’re meeting with Yvan Arpa, a highly creative mind and founder of indie brand ArtyA. 

1 – Which watch changed the way you looked at watchmaking?

A sundial from Roman times. It is the very first watch, the origin of everything we do. What fascinates me is that, already two thousand years ago, a timepiece was not merely an instrument. Under those sundials, people engraved mottoes, little pieces of philosophy about time. My favourite is “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat”: all hours wound, the last one kills. In one sentence, you have everything. A watch does not simply measure time; it reminds you that time is your life, and that every hour must be lived intensely. When I understood that, I understood that a watch must always tell more than the time.

2 – What is the quality you value most in a watch?

Innovation. For me, this is the most important point. A watch must create not only a new emotion, but it must also show something that never existed before. We have had watches for close to five hundred years. If I repeat what people did before me, it is not interesting. I really want something new. We must reinvent the very basis of our industry, not do the same thing again and again.

3 – Which is your favourite complication?

The tourbillon. To me, a tourbillon is a way to watch, from a certain distance, how time passes. It is poetry in mechanics.

4 – What is the most overrated trend in modern watchmaking?

Trusting only the big names. So many people buy nothing but the big brands, without ever going to discover the independents, with all the energy, the passion and the innovation they put into their watches.

5 – What detail instantly tells you a watch was made with care?

The escapement, and how it is regulated. Is it standard? Is it traditional? That is one easy way to see the hand of the watchmaker.

6 – Which moment do you believe most fundamentally shaped watchmaking as we know it today?

The quartz crisis, of course. It truly redefined what we, as watchmakers, have to do.

7 – What is the greatest challenge facing the watch industry today?

To reinvent ourselves. Look at industries that became completely niche, like the hat industry. Two or three generations ago, everybody wore a hat in the street. Today, almost nobody does. We do not want that fate for the watch industry. We must offer not only emotion at the wrist, but a spectacle, a show, engineering at your wrist. Something more than telling the time. Something you love to feel, to watch, and through which you understand the passion and the work it contains.

8 – What outside sources of inspiration most influence your thinking in watchmaking?

For me, the most important thing is to stay like a child, to keep marvelling at everything. It can be a flower, an animal, people, a building, a piece of architecture. Keeping a child’s mind is the real source of inspiration.

9 – Which watch do you wish you had created?

The ones I have not created yet. Because of them, I cannot sleep properly. They wake me up at night, and I keep thinking of solutions to make them work.

10 – Which watch do you wear most when nobody is watching?

As some people know, I was head of design for the Samsung Gear S3. So when I box with my friends, I wear a connected watch. That is the one I wear when only my boxing friends are around.

11 – Which personality has most shaped your view of watchmaking?

My kids. Their view is the future. They are thirty or forty years younger than me, so what they see, what they feel, and how they reinterpret watchmaking is fantastic. I am lucky to be very close to my three kids, and they all give me precious input. I love it.

12 – What should younger collectors focus on before buying their next watch?

Passion, excellence and innovation. And they should seek contact with the person who created the watch, not a salesman or a banker. They need to feel the passion to understand the work we put into a watch.