Leica Camera, the German brand used by famed photographers like Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray, plans to add a new category this fall to its array of meticulously made technical items: luxury watches.
“We’ve always been dealing with the mechanical construction of outstanding instruments,” said Jérôme Auzanneau, managing director of Ernst Leitz Werkstätten, a division of the company, and global director of Leica’s accessories. “There was no reason why we couldn’t try and extend the brand a bit further.
“We are very good at making precise instruments,” he added, “so why not do a watch?”
The collection, coming in November, will have two manually wound timepieces: the L1, a time-and-date model priced at 9,900 euros ($11,460) and the L2, with a G.M.T. function, at slightly less than €15,000. Both will be 41 millimeters in diameter and cased in stainless steel. The L2 will also be offered in rose gold.
The watches initially will be sold only at specially chosen Leica boutiques, including the ones in the Mayfair neighborhood of London and West Hollywood, Calif. Wider distribution through select watch retailers is planned for next year, as is an additional model, the L3.
Fundamentally, watches and cameras have quite a lot in common. “To move from cameras to watches, you are talking about a very similar kind of device,” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, a vice president and principal analyst for Forrester Research. “The attributes that personify Leica — creativity, the expertise, a brand that is treasured — apply equally in the luxury watch sector.”
The somewhat industrial look of the watches is reminiscent of Leica’s camera dials, with sleek lines on a black background. (A limited number will have a face that’s bright red.) The timepieces were designed by Achim Heine, who worked on Leica’s M Series of cameras as well as other items. As Mr. Auzanneau put it, “Who else could better design the Leica watch than the guy who’s been designing the Leica cameras and lenses for decades?”
The watches are being produced at Leica’s headquarters in Wetzlar, Germany, about an hour’s drive north of Frankfurt, using movements by Lehmann Präzision, which makes high-precision machinery as well as its own watches. “It’s a genuine, pure-German Leica product,” Mr. Auzanneau said.
