“IT’S LIKE THE OLD SAYING,” says Jaeger-LeCoultre’s CEO Jerome Lambert, “You can never cross the same river twice.

“It’s still swimming, but both you and the water are different.” He’s not cryptically hinting at a new expedition-focused watch, and nor is he the kind of CEO that spends his interviews evangelising about wellness trends. (He is a keen runner, but that’s beside the point.)  

What Lambert is getting at is the fact that he may be Jaeger-LeCoultre’s new CEO, but he is also its old CEO. The 56-year-old executive first led the brand from 2002-13 (“the youngest watch-brand CEO who wasn’t somebody’s son”, he says with a wry smile), and was reappointed to the same position at the end of 2024. In the interim, he ran Montblanc for four years before taking a series of increasingly senior positions in the central team at Richemont, the multi-billion-dollar luxury group that owns both companies, alongside Cartier, Vacheron Constantin, IWC, Panerai, Dunhill and a slew of other blue-chip names.  

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When he left his role as group chief executive officer (via a brief stint as chief operating officer) to return to running a single brand, it raised eyebrows among observers. But, he says with palpable enthusiasm, it’s a liberating proposition.  

“I was talking to a French former prime minister I know – I won’t say which one – and he said, ‘You are experiencing something special doing your dream job twice’. He made the comparison, not me – I’m not saving lives – but he said only [former French president Jacques] Chirac got to do this twice and had the chance to enjoy it the second time, because the first time you are under such a volume of stress you can’t enjoy it.” 

Lambert goes on to say that the benefit of additional experience is the real difference – not that his first stint was characterised by overwhelming stress – and that, this time round, he can take more risks. He does not intend to tear up the rule book, however. “There are areas where you know that disruption has to be part of the agenda and areas where continuity is the premier force,” he says.  

Disruption isn’t the first word that leaps to mind when contemplating the 193-year-old company known within the industry as “the watchmaker’s watchmaker”; a brand that centred its releases at this year’s Watches & Wonders fair once again around its iconic rectangular dress watch, the Reverso – itself nearly a century old. A host of impressive pieces was announced, including a world-timer with the complication on the back of the flippable case, a fabulous skeletonised minute repeater and a celestial-themed jumping-hour reference. Arguably, however, the watch that drew the most plaudits was a simple Reverso Tribute in rose gold with a matching gold dial and slinky Milanese mesh bracelet, also in 18c gold. So, it’s questionable how much disruption the people really want.  

Lambert is quick to defend the company’s history of bold innovation, pointing out that the Reverso itself was a radical idea for its time, and rattles off a list of inventions and ideas from his first tenure, among them the brand’s collaboration with Aston Martin, which yielded a chronograph controlled by pressing down on the crystal and a radio transmitter that could unlock your car; the Master Extreme Lab, which operated entirely without lubrication; the first Atmos clocks with complications and a portfolio of extremely high-end and technologically groundbreaking movements under the mantle of what the brand calls ‘hybris mechanica’. He has a point, but – now we’re back to the river – says that, second time around, he isn’t working from the same mood board. No more sports cars, chunky Reverso Squadras or sci-fi ‘extreme’ designs. 

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Instead, he says, there might be continuity that reflects what has changed in the industry in the last decade-and-change. Taking just one example, he remarks on the Atmos clocks Jaeger-LeCoultre produced in collaboration with Australian designer Marc Newson. “It was very interesting. But if we do that again, I don’t think that we’ll just do clocks.” 

A watchmaking giant like Jaeger-LeCoultre has dozens of projects in the pipeline at any one time, but also typically plans its line-up anywhere from five-to-eight years in advance, meaning that little of what we have seen so far will have been initiated by Lambert. But, he says, he can still pull some strings for immediate impact. “We are working simultaneously on tens of projects. The CEO has the privilege of choosing if he wants to play spring before summer or summer before winter. It’s not that I’m changing the content, but I’m changing what comes first and what I want to accelerate.” 

Since Watches & Wonders, the brand has released quite the parade of heavy-hitters, even if most of the top-tier complications are fresh versions of showstopper watches originally released – as luck would have it – in Lambert’s first era. By revisiting models such as the Calibre 945 and 985 – a tourbillon minute repeater with equation of time, and tourbillon world-timer, respectively – he may be subtly reminding the haute horlogerie set that Jaeger-LeCoultre can still operate at their level. Meanwhile, a limited-edition set of three Reverso Tribute models celebrating the Lunar Year of the Horse, which begins in January 2026, each with a recreation of a Xu Beihong painting on their reverse side, are a far cry from the half-hearted cash-ins that the passage of the zodiac can sometimes elicit from Switzerland’s big names. 

If there is one collection that die-hard fans would like to see Lambert take in hand, however, it is probably the Master Ultra-Thin range (followed closely by its cousin, the Master Control). Introduced in the ’90s as the company reaffirmed its commitment to traditional watchmaking, it has long since ceded ground in the ultra-thin stakes to the likes of Piaget and Bulgari, and while perfectly smart, has not necessarily taken imaginations by storm in recent years. The brief – to channel a vintage aesthetic without slavish imitation or descent into anonymity – is a tricky one, and the collection is likely to be one area where disruption is not Lambert’s watchword.  

Nevertheless, he promises that smaller and thinner designs are inbound, in recognition of current tastes, and two of the brand’s most recent additions are encouraging ones. Released in September, a limited edition of the Master Control Calendar in grey adds a textured, tonal dial to the 40mm steel model that’s sharp and sophisticated; it has been followed by November’s Master Ultra-Thin Moon with a ‘soft copper’ dial, another delicate application of texture that makes the watch just that little bit more interesting. Small steps, perhaps, but in the right direction, and there is little doubt that Lambert has much more planned for both ranges and the company as a whole.  

“I’m confident in my team, in our creativity and inventiveness,” he says. “They have what it takes to shape the future. It is still to be done, but the capacity is there.”

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