Brand: Hermès Model: Loquet Reference: L01.201 Case Material: Gold-plated stainless steel Case Shape: Rectangular Case Size: Approximately 20mm x 13mm Dial: Champagne guilloche with stick indices Bracelet: Gold-plated bangle with blue lizard inlay Movement: Quartz Gender: Women Founded in 1837 as a purveyor of equestrian harnesses and saddles, Hermès extended its Paris craftsmanship into timepieces during the twentieth century, collaborating with established Swiss manufacturers to house precise movements within cases of singular design. The Loquet collection marries the bangle form with a hinged clasp mechanism that frames the watch head, a study in architectural economy. This example presents a rectangular case in gold-plated steel, its champagne dial rendered in vertical guilloche that catches the light across the hour track. Alternating panels of blue lizard skin punctuate the cuff, echoing the house's devotion to exotic leathers and the interplay of metal and hide that defines its dual heritage in leather goods and horology. Notes from the Curator The Loquet reference L01.201, produced circa the year 2000, belongs to a small family of bangle watches that distill the house's clic-clac bracelet mechanism into a wearable timepiece. The hinged clasp does double duty: the rectangular case housing the quartz movement is integrated directly into the closure system, which opens by pressing outward. This example carries lizard-skin inlay across the gold-plated stainless-steel bangle, the reptilian texture echoing a material the house has worked since its nineteenth-century equestrian origins. Directly inspired by the clic-clac bracelet, the case is housed in the heart of the closing mechanism, an economy of design that collapses ornament and function into a single gesture. The Loquet's compact 20mm-by-13mm case makes it, in effect, a jewellery watch whose timekeeping is almost incidental to the sculptural play of metal, leather, and negative space around the wrist—a philosophy the house has pursued in watchmaking since its earliest collaborations with Swiss manufacturers in the twentieth century.