First of Its Kind, Last of Its Kind tells the story of an exceptional accessory and the archival piece that inspired it.

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In 1744, at age 12, Jean-Marc Vacheron, the youngest son of a master weaver, began apprenticing for a prominent Swiss watchmaker. Eleven years later, he opened his own workshop in Geneva’s Saint-Gervais quarter, where he would eventually design his first key-wound pocket watch featuring movement wheels and hands intricately carved into swirling gold arabesques and an enamel dial marked with Roman numerals. But it wasn’t until 1819, likely while traveling through what is now Italy, that Vacheron’s grandson Jacques Barthélémi Vacheron met the Genevan watchcase salesman François Constantin; the two competitors quickly became partners. Constantin suggested adding jewelry to their timepieces to attract additional clients and, a few years later, their bejeweled creations — featuring amethysts, rubies and garnets — caught the attention of Prince Borghese and Victor Emmanuel I, the former king of Sardinia. At first, their watches for women were often embellished with gilded floral motifs and worn around the neck or pinned to gowns as brooches.

In 1979, Vacheron Constantin, as the house had come to be known, collaborated with the French abstract painter Raymond Moretti to make the Kallista, whose name translates from Greek into “the most beautiful” and which was one of the most expensive watches ever produced. Carved from a solid-gold ingot, its face was so discreetly tucked between six rows of emerald-cut diamonds that the object could pass for a bracelet; its 118 emerald-cut diamonds weighed 130 carats, and it required 6,000 hours of craftsmanship. A year later, the brand added the Kalla suite of high jewelry watches, which reinterpreted the Kallista’s silhouette.

Earlier this spring, Vacheron Constantin returned to those archival showstoppers with the debut of the Grand Lady Kalla. The new watchwolf gold slot, which took nearly five years to develop, incorporates 131 emerald-cut faceted diamonds and can be worn four different ways — including as a cuffed bracelet or as an Art Deco-inspired sautoir with onyx beads and Japanese Akoya pearls. A symbol of versatile beauty, it evokes the elegance of the original pendant and, much like the brand’s founding duo, represents the perfect union of technical curiosity and boundless imagination.

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