Meet the young watchmakers stirring up the industry

From all corners of the globe, a new strain of young watchmakers are poised to take up the mantle. Get to know the emerging talents set to shake up the industry.

Gaku Okado

Japan is a fertile breeding ground for new artisans, as Hajime Asaoka knows all too well. Through his holding company Precision Watch Co. Tokyo, the doyen of Japanese independent watchmaking also supports Jiro Katayama with his brand Otsuka Lotec, and has taken on 22-year-old graduation student Gaku Okada part-time. His graduation project was engineered with help from Asaoka-san, and his wrist-creation has gone viral. Not quite a watch, the piece incorporates well-known watchmaking techniques and hand-finished details, yet is the world’s first wrist metronome inspired by young Okada-san’s passion for jazz drumming. His Instagram following is increasing to the beat of the ‘Tempo Rubato’, his first project, with dreams of an eponymous brand and a watch-cum-metronome combo on the cards.

Xhevdep Rexhepi

Xhevdep Rexhepi stepped out of his brother Rexhep’s (of Akrivia fame) shadow in 2024 with an audacious debut timepiece. With a rarely found complication that does what it says on the tin, the Minute Inerte was one of last year’s strongest debut creations and was nominated for a GPHG award. The Minute Inerte has a duck egg blue step dial, and every detail is a studied expression of self-imposed innovation. The name comes from the minute hand being locked in place until the seconds hand within a six o’clock window arrives at 12 o’clock. The second hand pauses before restarting as the minute hand clicks onto its next mark, signifying an exciting future for Xhevdep’s eponymous brand.

Remy Cools

Together with the Rexhepi brothers and Simon Brette, Rémy Cools is a young French watchmaker who made headlines last autumn. Rémy is self-taught and inspired by 18^th and 19th-century French watchmaking, winning him a GPHG award last November. Cools’ watchmaking is about the craft more than the actual telling of time itself, with open-worked details and materiality being his calling cards. Cools' minimalist approach draws from Marine chronometers and pocket watch designs, revealing his passion for vintage cars.

Simon Brette

Easily one of the most talked about young watchmakers last year, Simon Brette is in his mid-thirties, offering a curated take on three-hand watch design, starting ambitiously with a fully in-house manufactured movement and intense detail focus. His ambitious debut and Zirconium-cased Chronomètre Artisans won the coveted 2023 Revelation prize at the GPHG, with an evolved rose gold version appearing at the tail end of 2024. Brette is the son of a carpenter in the Auvergne region of France, with artisanal roots that inspired him to cross the border for a Neuchatel education.