Czapek & Cie has gone back to where it started. The brand has opened a flagship boutique at Quai des Bergues 27 in Geneva, the address where, in 1839, François Czapek and the Polish émigré Antoni Patek laid the foundations of Patek, Czapek & Cie. That partnership ran for six years before it dissolved in 1845, after which Czapek founded his own house and opened a boutique on the Place Vendôme in Paris. Both names now carry weight for the modern Czapek, revived in 2015 by Xavier de Roquemaurel. The boutique opened in July 2026, with the inaugural event timed to Geneva Watch Days, and it is marked by two limited editions. The more serious of the two is a platinum Place Vendôme Complicité in Glacier Blue.
Two balances, one average
The Complicité is built around a double regulator, an idea brought to Czapek by the German master watchmaker Bernhard Lederer in 2023. Rather than a single balance, the movement carries two independent 3Hz balances that oscillate in opposite directions, each doing its own timekeeping. A differential sits between them and averages their rates, so the watch runs on the mean of the pair. In theory, errors in one balance are partly cancelled by the other, an approach that traces back to marine chronometry and resonance experiments, and one that very few makers attempt in a wristwatch.
The layout uses the signature Place Vendôme geometry, with counters forming the base of a pyramid and a third element at its apex. Here the two escapements sit at 4:30 and 7:30, the differential connects them at noon, and their gear trains run down the centre of the dial, fully exposed under two sapphire bridges. A power reserve indicator sits at 6 o'clock, between the two balances.
Glacier Blue on grained metal
The visual change for this edition is the colour. The exposed mechanism now sits on a light blue grained mainplate, and the circular hour and minute track is picked out in a pale Glacier Blue, with applied mirror-polished indices and partially skeletonised sword hands. It is a cold, quiet palette that suits a watch whose main event is mechanical rather than decorative, and it reads cleanly despite everything happening behind it.
The case is 41.8mm across and 13.3mm thick in platinum, with sandblasted, hollowed-out lugs and crown guards and a domed sapphire crystal. Platinum is the heavy, understated choice here, and at a 10-piece run it is the material that tells you this is the top of the Place Vendôme line rather than a colour variant.
The Calibre 8
Driving all of this is the manual-winding Calibre 8, Lederer's 293-part movement. It beats at 21,600 vibrations per hour, or 3Hz per balance, carries 44 jewels, and holds 72 hours of power. The dial side is the show, but the reverse, seen through the caseback, carries contemporary matte grey bridges and the hand finishing expected at this level.
Price and availability
The Place Vendôme Complicité Glacier Blue comes on an alligator strap with a platinum pin buckle. It is a limited edition of 10 numbered pieces, priced at CHF 103,000, or EUR 113,000 and USD 144,200. Both new editions are sold at the Quai des Bergues 27 boutique and through Czapek retailers. The Complicité was already one of the more interesting things an independent is doing with the regulator, and putting it in platinum to open a historically loaded address is a fitting way to mark the return.
Sources: Monochrome Watches and Czapek.
