Three of the world’s leading luxury watch brands including IWC Schaffhausen, Panerai, and Jaeger-LeCoultre announced today the opening of their first boutiques in San Francisco at the Westfield San Francisco Centre and Westfield Valley Fair. This significant series of openings underlines the importance of the Golden Gate City as a West Coast hub not only of technology and commerce but also of watch collecting and fine watch culture. Never before have local clients experienced first-hand each brand’s unique lifestyle and culture the way it is possible through an immersive boutique. With two complementary locations to serve the area, exploring the exclusive offerings each brand brings to the area is guaranteed to excite new enthusiasts and passionate collectors.
Westfield San Francisco Centre is a popular and upscale shopping mall managed by the Westfield Group and located at the crossroad between Market Street and Powell Street. It will welcome both the popular Swiss German precision brand IWC Schaffhausen and the leading Italian sports watch brand Panerai through its doors. Westfield San Francisco Centre is the only indoor mall-type shopping experience within the famous Union Square district. Westfield Valley Fair, located in the upscale residential area of Santa Clara, will also welcome the historic Swiss watch brand Jaeger-LeCoultre along with the two additional Panerai and IWC Schaffhausen boutiques opening in that location.
About IWC Schaffhausen
Storytelling through functional complications and advanced materials, for over more than 150 years, IWC Schaffhausen has earned its reputation as an engineer of fine watchmaking. The company is known for its functional and technically-elegant complications, such as the legendary perpetual calendar. Developed by IWC’s head watchmaker, Kurt Klaus, during the 1980s, this intricate mechanical program will recognize the different lengths of the months and even add a leap day every four years, at the end of February. The moon phase display of this ingenious mechanism is so precise that it will only need to be adjusted by one day after 577.5 years. IWC is also an innovator in the area of advanced case materials. After pioneering the use of titanium and ceramic for watch cases, the company most recently introduced Ceratanium®. This newly developed material combines the lightness and durability of titanium with the hardness and scratch-resistance of ceramic. It is used, for example, for the Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph Top Gun Ceratanium.
About Panerai
Every Panerai boutique expresses the brand’s history and DNA as the premier luxury Italian sports watch. These two new boutiques in particular, represents the new concept of design by Panerai’s flagship Creative Director, Alvaro Maggini, the first to hold this position at the brand. The materials used in the boutique include burnished brass, bronze, durmast oak, and the special reeded glass, undulating and transparent, while the custom carpet reflects the brand’s oceanic origins. These are all clear references to the marine world and the glorious past of the brand, whose roots are embedded in the history of the Italian Navy. Many of the decorative elements within the boutique evoke the historic survival instruments made by Panerai for the heroic Italian frogmen who operated from the 1930s to the 1950s. Iconic furniture elements such as Utrecht chairs complement the modern Italian finishes, creating a perfect harmony of old and new. A central point of both boutiques is Panerai’s iconic luminous life-size clock, an image that has become synonymous with the brand’s elaborate history of pioneering innovations in underwater exploration.
About Jaeger-LeCoultre
From the Vallée de Joux in Switzerland, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s new boutique will provide clients with an exclusive experience, offering up some of the Grande Maison’s finest complications, icons, and core models. La Grande Maison pays homage to the sounds of nature that form a backdrop to daily life in the Vallée de Joux, and to its great legacy of chiming timepieces, expressing a century and a half of accumulated expertise in fresh new ways. During the 150 years since the Manufacture developed its first minute repeater in 1870, chiming watches have been a particular forte, with 200 calibres demonstrating its mastery of all forms, from relatively simple alarms to highly complex sonneries and repeaters. In parallel, the Manufacture’s engineers and designers have patented numerous innovations that redefine the benchmark for acoustic quality and beauty.
In 2021, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s most iconic model, the Reverso, celebrates its 90th anniversary. Created in 1931, at the height of the Art Deco period, the Reverso was developed to meet the demands of the newly fashionable ‘sporting gentleman’ – specifically, the polo player. A masterful integration of form and function, with its clean lines and flip-over case, it has become one of the world’s most recognizable watches —an icon, in the true sense of the word.
