PARISIAN DNA
the birth of trilobe
TIME MOVES PURPOSE STAYS
At Trilobe, every creation begins with a simple question: what if we did things differently? What if, instead of following conventions, we reinvented them? Not out of a desire to provoke, but out of conviction.
Turning constraints into drivers of creativity, questioning the obvious: this is our challenge. Why read the time the way we have for seven centuries?
Our answer: dare to experience time differently. An invitation to rethink the intuitive, challenge conventions, and forge another path: our own.
Gautier Massonneau, founder and creative director
Nothing seemed to point Gautier Massonneau towards founding a Haute Horlogerie Maison. Born in 1990, Gautier Massonneau grew up in Paris. A graduate of Université Paris Dauphine and École des Ponts et Chaussées, he began his career in infrastructure project finance, first in Japan and then in the Middle East, far removed from the refined and meticulous world of Haute Horlogerie.
Neither Swiss nor a watchmaker.
It was on the eve of his 25th birthday, as he was preparing to purchase his first collector’s watch, that Gautier set himself a personal challenge, marking the beginning of the Trilobe journey: to design and create his own watch. Balancing disruption and continuity, he set out to create something different: an understated, timeless design with finishes worthy of the standards of Haute Horlogerie.
A CONCEPTUAL REVERSAL
With no formal training in watchmaking, Gautier embarked on this ambitious project. He had no shortage of ideas, and his concept of reversing the traditional display of time emerged very early on, accompanied by numerous sketches.
But Gautier soon encountered obstacles during the technical development phase. He had to face the reality that he would not be able to take on this challenge alone. He then contacted the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie (FHH), which put him in touch with Jean-François Mojon, former R&D Director at IWC and founder of the Swiss manufacture Chronode. It was following this meeting that the idea of founding a Haute Horlogerie Maison began to take shape in Gautier’s mind.
What was meant to be a 30-minute meeting ultimately lasted five hours. Convinced by the project’s potential, Jean-François Mojon offered to support Gautier in developing a first collection of timepieces. What was originally intended to be a one-off piece ultimately became the first model in an inaugural series of 100 watches, officially unveiled on December 17, 2018, at the Maison’s launch evening.
An X-Centric vision of watchmaking
The son of an architect and an interior designer, Gautier has always been encouraged to remain curious, shift perspectives, and combine materials and forms while respecting a certain sense of tradition, always driven by an attraction to beauty and complexity.
See time differently
As a child, his mother taught him the importance of looking at things from a different perspective, for example, by climbing onto a chair to change his point of view when faced with a maths problem he could not solve.
A new frame of reference for reading time
It is this mindset, together with the conviction that nothing is absolute, that drives Gautier to embark on this ambitious project: creating a new frame of reference for reading time.
Trilobe puts an end to seven centuries of watchmaking tradition by offering a new way of reading time. Freed from the constraints of hands, time is set in motion.