This is an edition of the newsletter Box + Papers, Cam Wolf’s weekly deep dive into the world of watches. Sign up here.
The watch industry’s sleeping giant is slowly stirring. As collectors have fallen hard for vintage timepieces over the past few years, one of the most talked-about brands wasn’t even producing watches anymore. Universal Genève has all the credentials for a watchmaker that should be a dominant player in 2024: a sexy lineage of chronographs, elegant and distinctively shaped ladies’ pieces, and a foundational model designed by none other than Gérald Genta. Brands today can be a runaway hit by checking just one of those boxes—UG ticks all three with a fat marker. Fortunately, last December, Breitling announced that it had acquired the beloved Universal Genève brand and planned to restore it to its former glory.
There’s still a long road ahead before UG begins producing new watches, but the brand took its first major steps in that direction yesterday with the launch of its very first website (welcome to the 21st century!). Out-of-the-know collectors, you’re officially on the clock: this is your chance to get acquainted so you can say you knew UG before it was cool—or cooler than it is, anyway.
So, what’s a Universal Genève?
Universal Genève—also known as Universal, UG, or U-Genny from the Block (kidding)—is a historic Swiss watchmaker that’s developed a cult following over the last decade and a half. The company was founded in 1894 and gained a reputation for its inventive chronograph watches. To put UG’s importance into context, in 1935, the brand moved its headquarters to Geneva’s Rue du Rhône where it was situated directly between Rolex and Patek Philippe. But in 1989, the brand struggled mightily to navigate the Quartz Crisis and eventually folded. Stelux Holdings then purchased the UG name and unsuccessfully attempted to reboot the brand in 1994 and 2005. The brand has essentially remained dormant for more than three decades.
What makes Universal so special?
Universal’s resume is stacked. Many collectors find their way to the brand through a healthy love for Patek Philippe, whose ref. 1518, a legendary (and legendarily expensive) perpetual calendar, bears a close resemblance to UG’s Tri-Compax model. That’s how super-UG collector @DandyWatchman first discovered Universal. “You’re never going to be able to have the 1518, but you really love the look of it. So, how do I make that happen? And going down the road of the 1940s Tri-Compax was basically how you made that happen,” he told me over the phone this week.
But once collectors are hooked on UG, they quickly learn that the brand is so much more than a poor man’s Patek. “One of the big [appeals] is the diversity of what they did,” Dandy said. Indeed, in its heyday, Universal made a watch for virtually every use case. Pilots, doctors, and even film directors were all served by specific UG chronographs. One of the coolest (and hardest to find) UG examples is the Film Compax, which has a scale that measures the amount of film tape is being used in feet per second. The esteemed dealer Sacha Davidoff and Italian collector Mr. A once researched the reference and found that only seven known examples existed. UG’s history is filled with delightful little models like this.
