It’s difficult to picture what the independent watchmaking landscape would look like without MB&F. In some ways, it feels like the brand has always been around, perhaps because for me, it has. I first discovered MB&F in 2008 when the HM2 was launched, but even back then the brand had an aura of polish that belied its short history.

With the benefit of hindsight, Max Büsser’s decision to step away from corporate life, and leave the top job at Harry Winston Rare Timepieces to build his own brand rooted in collaboration, transparency, and imagination, seems obvious. But at the time, it was seen as a risky move that would never work. To understand why it did, we need to go back to the early 2000s.

Max Büsser during the launch of the HM1

It’s called what?

Let’s rewind. In the early 2000s the watch community was obsessed with the topic of in-house movements. The internet was slowly helping collectors find one another and share insider knowledge, which revealed how many watches were powered by the same handful of movements. If a new brand wanted to be taken seriously, it was increasingly important to be a manufacture and do as much as possible in-house. It was a simpler time, and we had yet to see such widespread misuse of the term. 

So when Mr Büsser explained that MB&F stood for ‘Maximilian Büsser & Friends,’ and that he would actively celebrate the friends and collaborators that he was working with, people told him he was crazy. But he understood that the collector appetite for in-house movements was actually rooted in a hunger for authenticity, and for him that meant being transparent about what he was doing.

The ‘friends’ of the HM1. Image – MB&F

In this belief, Mr Büsser was ahead of the curve. The industry would eventually erode much of the meaning from the term ‘in-house’ leading collectors to demand more transparency into who makes what, vindicating MB&F’s novel approach to showcasing its subcontractors. 

To this day, when MB&F releases a new watch, the brand shares a detailed information sheet that lists the maker(s) of each component. You might think this would now be commonplace, but it’s not. I’ve seen other brands do this on a limited basis, but usually only when asked. In this respect, MB&F remains a pioneer.

Despite working with many high-profile ‘friends,’ MB&F does plenty of value-added work in-house. Image – MB&F

Inaugurated in 2022, the M.A.D. House is the brand’s home base in Geneva. Image – MB&F

The rise of the machines

MB&F made a splash when it debuted the first Horological Machine, the HM1, in 2007. The early Horological Machines defied conventional norms for watch design, blending the romance of steampunk with the optimism of science-fiction. In other words, they didn’t look like watches at all.

Eric Giroud is responsible for the design of many of MB&F’s greatest hits. Image – MB&F

An hourglass-shaped timepiece 64 mm wide, the HM1 was designed by Eric Giroud, who would become an instrumental collaborator in the coming years.

The HM1 incorporated a central tourbillon flanked by retrograde hour and minute displays, and its debut was a watershed moment for independent watchmaking in both design and concept. 

The HM1 in rose gold (left), and in black-coated titanium

But it almost never existed. The sub-contractor that had committed to final assembly was unexpectedly acquired by another firm, and backed out at the last minute.

All seemed lost until Peter Speake (then still Speake-Marin), who had designed the HM1’s movement alongside Laurent Besse, called in a favour with a Northern Irishman named Stephen McDonnell, who stepped up to handle the assembly for the extraordinarily complex movement. Like many friends of the brand, McDonnell is a name we’ll see again later.

The movement of the HM1 was unlike anything seen before, and featured four mainspring barrels. Image – MB&F

After the launch of the HM1, there was no time to waste. The HM2 launched a year later, refining the idea of what a wrist-worn instrument panel might look like, with double retrograde time and date displays visible through symmetrical portholes.

The sapphire version of the MB&F HM2, the HM2-SV, remains one of my favourite MB&F designs and arguably represents the high water mark for sapphire-cased watches.

The bug-eyed HM3 and bomber-inspired HM4 debuted in 2009 and 2010, respectively, but the world was not quite ready for the dawn of the Horological Machines. As a result, business in the early years proved challenging for MB&F and other independent brands that had launched in the years leading up the global financial crisis. 

The HM3 spawned many iterations and collaborations with other designers

The HM4

The risk of the familiar

For most luxury brands, it’s a big risk to make anything other than a classical round watch. The round luxury watch is a known entity; collectors and commentators have become well-versed in its many derivations and have developed certain expectations about how it should look. 

But as Mr Büsser pointed out in our recent interview, no one had a reference point for comprehending the HM1, or the Horological Machines that followed. When the entire form factor is revolutionary, “Nobody can say it’s better or worse because it’s so out there it doesn’t look like anything which exists, [but] when you create a more classical round watch, everybody is a specialist.”

The Legacy Machine collection has grown to become a key pillar of the brand. Image – MB&F

In this context, Mr Büsser views the October 2011 launch of the Legacy Machine LM1 as one of the biggest risks the brand took in those first 10 years and feels lucky he didn’t realise it at the time. 

The original LM1 “Longhorn” prototype.

Where the Horological Machines took their inspiration from imagination, the Legacy Machine collection looked in the rearview mirror, reinterpreting traditional watchmaking through the unique perspectives of Mr Büsser and Mr Giroud.

Note how the LM1’s printed numerals and logo appear to float, casting shadows on the dial base, thanks to multiple layers of lacquer.

Features like the LM1’s glossy lacquered dials, blued steel hands, and overcoil hairspring were clear nods to the past, while inside the sweeping movement bridges were designed by Kari Voutilainen and brought to life by Jean-François Mojon of Chronode.

From left: Kari Voutilainen, Max Büsser, and Jean-Francois Mojon. Image – MB&F

The LM1 was the first of many Legacy Machines, a collection that attracted new collectors to the brand and showed that MB&F was not a one-trick pony.

Twenty-eleven was a big year for MB&F in another respect, because in addition to launching the LM1, the brand took its first foray into brick-and-mortar retail, opening up the M.A.D. Gallery in Geneva.

M.A.D. stands for ‘Mechanical Art Devices’ and the store was unlike any other watch shop, because in addition to selling MB&F watches, the store also sold a variety of kinetic sculptures created by other artists. The original store in Geneva was successful enough that a second outpost in Dubai was opened a few years later. 

The M.A.D. Gallery in Geneva’s Old Town. Image – MB&F

Perpetually interesting

By 2015, the Legacy Machine collection spanned three different models, the LM1, LM2, and LM101. But while the LM1 featured twin time displays and the LM2 featured a then-rare differential to average the rates from twin escapements, they were fundamentally simple, time-only watches. 

It was Stephen McDonnell, the watchmaker who played such a pivotal role in bringing the HM1 to life, that conceived of a new kind of perpetual calendar that would suit the Legacy Machine aesthetic. 

Stephen McDonnell. Image – MB&F

Mr Büsser was initially reluctant to move forward with the production of a perpetual calendar; he’d spent his formative years at Jaeger-LeCoultre and was all too familiar with the repair cycle that would result from an owner mistaking midnight for noon.

The groundbreaking LM Perpetual.

But Mr McDonnell had found a way to overcome the fragility of the traditional perpetual calendar using what he described as a mechanical processor. This would not only make setting the watch foolproof, it would offer a visually dynamic spectacle befitting an MB&F.

The LM Perpetual made its debut in 2015, and even a decade later it remains near the apex of perpetual calendar designs due to its user-friendliness and novel construction.

Mr McDonnell’s mechanical processor. Image – MB&F

The brand would tap Mr McDonnell again a few years later for its first chronograph, the LM Sequential EVO, which was MB&F’s take on the split-seconds chronograph complication. But instead of stacking the elapsed seconds hands, as is the norm, Mr McDonnell arranged them side-by-side, and thanks to a component dubbed the Twinverter, enabled each chronograph mechanisms to operate independently or in synchronisation. 

MB&F watches always looked cool, but Mr McDonnell’s outside-the-box approach to movement design and construction elevated the brand to a new level of technical competency.

An animation showing the action of the Twinverter. Image – MB&F

The accidental brand

Watchmaking is a difficult business; new brands are typically launched at great expense, never accidentally. But that’s exactly what happened in 2021 when Mr Büsser decided to make an affordable watch for family and friends. The M.A.D. 1 would be a 500-piece limited edition, and wouldn’t be sold publicly, which would make things easy. At least, that was the idea. 

But things quickly got out of hand when the collector community, many of whom were bored at home under COVID-19 restrictions, found out they couldn’t get one. Consumer psychology being what it is, demand turned frothy. In some ways, the M.A.D. 1, with its cost-effective Miyota base movement, was to the HM collection what the MoonSwatch would later become to the Speedmaster.

The first version of the M.A.D. 1. Image – MB&F

MB&F would ultimately launch a few publicly available versions of the M.A.D. 1, but initially tried to downplay it as a one-off project rather than a new brand or sub-collection. But collector appetite for an affordable entry point to the world of MB&F proved durable, and collectors could not get enough of the joyful spinning rotor front-and-center on the face (in this instance, the term ‘dial’ would be incorrect) of the watch.

It was only this year, with the launch of the M.A.D. 2,  that Mr Büsser conceded to his staff that, like it or not, the M.A.D. edition had become a brand of its own in the minds of collectors and would now be treated as such. 

For the design of the M.A.D. 2, Mr Giroud retained the signature unidirectional winding rotor but displayed it in a new way. Instead of the inverted movement of the M.A.D. 1, the M.A.D. 2 features a more traditional construction that reveals the edge of the rotor around the outside edge of the movement, which ‘floats’ in the center of the dial thanks to some subtle bridges at three and nine o’clock.

Otherwise, the design is inspired by the music scene from Mr Giroud’s own youth, featuring a jump-hour module with hour and minute rings organised side-by-side like records on a turntable.

The M.A.D. 2 is powered by a La Joux-Perret G101 base movement

Looking to the future

Earlier this year I asked Mr Büsser what it feels like to close the book on the first 20 years of MB&F. After a moment of contemplation he admitted “I very rarely look back; it’s not the way I function.” This mindset makes sense for someone who is perpetually managing multiple product development cycles at once, but what are milestone anniversaries for if not to get sentimental?

Regardless, Mr Büsser’s future-oriented perspective has been on full display over the past 12 months, selling a 25% stake in MB&F to Chanel at a nine-figure valuation, expanding the M.A.D. collection, and launching the SP One, the first model in the entirely new Special Projects collection.

Max Büsser (left) with MB&F co-owner and head of R&D Serge Kriknoff. Image – MB&F

Speaking of the SP One, Mr Büsser called it “The most beautiful gift I’ve given myself for the 20th anniversary…[wiping out] all boundaries that I had put around the brand.”

Unlike the Horological and Legacy Machines that are tied to a certain aesthetic, the Special Projects collection is not rooted in any single theme, beyond that of experimentation. 

The compact and comfortable SP One.

As for the involvement of Chanel, Mr Büsser confirmed they’ve been largely hands-off, and that the brand continues to operate with the same degree of freedom as ever. I believe him, since we’ve heard similar feedback from F.P. Journe and Romain Gauthier, both independent brands that have reached similar deals with Chanel.

The original sketch for the SP One. Image – MB&F

But having a deep-pocketed minority investor with skin in the game has its perks. Moving beyond the obvious benefit of liquidity, Mr Büsser remarked, “I feel for the first time in my life that if something went wrong I have somebody who’s got my back. At MB&F we’ve never had a safety net…so that actually allows you to take even more risks.”

The Special Projects collection is the first step taken in this new chapter, but it won’t be the last.