Where Art Meets Luxury Design

It is not often that the world of haute horlogerie vouchsafes a moment of artistic epiphany. But that is what happened recently at New York's Metropolitan Museum. When I sat down to a dinner hosted by Geneva watchmaker Vacheron Constantin in the majestic Temple of Dendur, all I knew about the sculptures of Africa and Oceania was that they had ethnographic interest. But that was before the sprightly septuagenarian Monique Barbier-Mueller got up and talked about how her father, struck by the 1930s financial crisis and no longer able to afford pieces by Kandinsky, Picasso, and Matisse, moved into collecting African masks and ivories, and funeral canoes from the Solomon Islands. Her story was so compelling that I was forced to reappraise my understanding of the works on loan to the Met from her Geneva museum.

The exhibition culminates a three-year collaboration between Vacheron and the Barbier-Mueller Museum, which has resulted in a series of watches known simply as the Masks. Bold and eerie— not to mention, at $370,000 for a set of four, a serious investment—these watches combine the craftsmanship husbanded by Vacheron with the jewels of a unique art collection.

Similarly, Ikepod is coming out with a watch designed by artist Jeff Koons. Although they differ in style and price (the Koons watch will sell for $15,675 in titanium), these two offerings are symptomatic of a growing interest in "art products." According to Louis Vuitton, the term was coined by the artist Takashi Murakami, whose work has appeared on the luggage maker's monogrammed canvas.

There was a time when artists inhabited an altogether loftier plane than the purveyors of luxury goods. There were occasional crossovers, such as Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian-inspired dress and Château Mouton Rothschild's artist-designed wine labels. But rarely did the twain meet.

Of course, what art confers is gravitas, and in the 1980s luxury did not have the cultural payload it carries today. That was when Alain Perrin, the CEO of Cartier and an enthusiastic art collector, inaugurated the Fondation Cartier—a prescient move, given luxury's subsequent shift to the intellectual high ground. The Fondation, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, commissions works of contemporary art for display in a dazzling space designed by Jean Nouvel.

Luxury brands have a weakness for bold architecture. Frank Gehry is designing a space for the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which will exhibit contemporary art when it opens in 2011; in 2007 Chanel mounted a globe-trotting exhibition of artworks inspired by Chanel bags housed in a pavilion designed by Zaha Hadid; and Prada's polyhedral Transformer structure by Rem Koolhaas in Seoul is the latest "it" building. Located in one of the brand's emerging markets, it is testament to the ambassadorial effect that art can have on behalf of luxury marques.