When Ulysse Nardin let its Freak flag fly, it changed watchmaking forever

Buffy Acacia

Whether it’s the Ugly Duckling, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, or the Elephant Man, society can’t get enough of these tales of pity. Happy endings or not, the harshness behind the word ‘freak’ instantly makes anyone with empathy feel for the underdog. So, when Ulysse Nardin released a watch called the Freak in 2001, the brand knew exactly what it was doing. It was ugly by conventional standards and broke all of the rules. But, most importantly, it changed the game.

The context

Unlike the other famous freaks, the Ulysse Nardin Freak was never meant to be an object of pity. Its embrace of the grotesque was not just an unfortunate aspect to be overcome but an intentional challenge of watchmaking norms. Having been revived from a Quartz Crisis-induced hole by visionary businessman Rolf Schnyder, the company had already staged its successful comeback. Dr Ludwig Oechslin was hired as Technical Director, and he used his knowledge of astronomy and theoretical physics to create the Astrolabium Galileo Galilei. It was inspired by Ulysse Nardin’s long history with marine chronometers as well as an astrolabe from Oechslin’s own collection and became the Guinness Book of Records World’s Most-Functional Watch with 21 separate complications.

After the Astrolabium, three more historic astronomy watches were released to complete the Trilogy of Time. Although they were technical marvels and phenomenal designs, they were still inoffensive to traditional tastes. Ulysse Nardin’s reputation had definitely reached an outstanding level for its achievements, but that wasn’t enough. Schnyder was particularly fascinated by the work of another employee named Carole Forestier-Kasapi, who had won the Prix de la Fondation Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1998 for her design of a carousel movement. More clearly, it was similar in concept to a tourbillon, but it was the whole movement which rotated within the watch rather than just the escapement.

The first Freak

Although the original idea had belonged to Forestier-Kasapi, who is now TAG Heuer’s Movement Director, the development of the Freak mainly fell to Dr Oechslin. Forestier-Kasapi’s doughnut-shaped design was too limited for a full-scale production watch and wouldn’t have had a long enough power reserve. In redeveloping the idea for an average consumer’s ease of use, the Freak’s movement ended up forming the watch’s hands. Specifically, the train of wheels made up the oversized minute hand, and the mainspring barrel cover was used as an hour hand.

Such a drastic and unique watch would have been enough to become a legend, but it both necessitated and was amplified by other revolutions simultaneously. The first was the way of winding the mainspring, which was done by rotating the entire caseback. A traditional crown would have taken forever to wind due to the sheer size of the mainspring and the gears, and it also would have been too comforting for a watch designed to shock traditionalists. The second was the method of setting the time by rotating the bezel, which admittedly was a bit too easy to do in its first iteration. A slipping bridle was used to ensure that the mainspring wasn’t being wound or unwound depending on how you twisted the bezel, similar to how a modern automatic movement can’t be ‘overwound’.

Silicium, the start of an era

It isn’t too much of an exaggeration to liken Dr Ludwig Oechslin to Leonardo da Vinci as a polymath with the urge to pursue any and all fields. While the original plan for the Freak was to use a generic lever escapement, Oechslin wanted to come up with something new just because he could. When the Freak launched in 2001, it went out with Oechslin’s own Dual Direct Escapement, which used two mirrored escape wheels. Unfortunately, it was plagued with issues and ended up being replaced in almost every Freak during servicing. However, the Dual Direct did leave a lasting impact because of its peculiar material use — silicium.

Silicon, not to be confused with silicone rubber, is an elemental metalloid, meaning it has properties of both metals and non-metals. It’s chemically non-reactive, resistant to magnetism, and greatly reduces friction between components. Silicium is essentially just elemental silicon with an oxide layer, which improves its temperature coefficient of elasticity, meaning that it doesn’t become any more or less flexible depending on the weather outside. That makes it an ideal material for creating hairsprings, which are usually made of a non-oxidising nickel-iron alloy. In addition to being a more reliable material overall, the spring can be made with integrated attachment points, making installation easier for watchmakers and reducing potential mechanical failures.

Initial reactions

When the Freak was actually released to the public, reactions were mixed. It’s not like Ulysse Nardin didn’t know it was releasing an ‘ugly’ watch; its name was Freak, after all. Schnyder and Oechslin even unveiled the watch in carnival masks at Basel World. But for those who didn’t understand the technical advancement behind its display or the impending revolution of silicium parts, it was simply another experimental release which should have stayed behind the closed doors of an R&D department. Those who knew they could tell that watchmaking had been fundamentally altered. Never before had almost every part of a watch been able to move and serve a purpose.

Further developments

The Freak’s second iteration in 2005 wasn’t just a slight update but a complete overhaul of the custom escapement. Now called the Dual Ulysse, this twin-oscillator escapement with a full 4Hz beat rate was actually everything that the first Dual Direct version had promised to be. The Dual Ulysse found its way into non-Freak releases so it could be appreciated by those who still hated the Freak, but Ulysse Nardin was far from done with its ugly duckling. In its time, the Freak has debuted more than 20 patents.

2017 saw the introduction of the Ulysse Nardin Grinder winding system, allowing the Freak to be wound automatically for the first time. The Freak X came along in 2019, toning down its visual extremity and attempting to make it a bit more accessible for consumers. Rather than containing the entire movement within the hands, it used a module on top of the calibre UN-118 to keep only the escapement above the dial.

In 2022, the Freak S departed the realm of the baroque and entered unabashed sci-fi territory. The angled wings of the Dual Ulysse and its DiamonSil escape wheels look just like a spaceship flying through the galaxy of the aventurine dial, while an innovative three-dimensional differential gear averaged out their beat rates for the best performance. One year later, in 2023, more Freaks were being released than ever before. The Freak ONE paid tribute to the original Freak from 2001, but with improvements such as a more refined dial, automatic winding, and a lockable bezel.

The future

Contemporary watchmaking owes a lot to the Ulysse Nardin Freak and not just to the advent of silicon movement components. Without it, highly conceptual and technical watches such as the Cartier Mass Mystérieuse almost certainly would never have been made. Most recently, the Freak S Nomad saw a repeat of the 2022 architecture with a freshened, industrial look, so perhaps the Freak is actually at its peak of popularity now. With lines such as the Freak One OPS and Freak X OPS, there seems to be a growing market for more accessible Freaks, too. Has the Freak become a victim of its own innovation, now too popular to continue taking huge risks? I doubt it. Ulysse Nardin doesn’t need any help to own its love of traditional watchmaking, and will certainly keep taking the Freak to new worlds of experimentation.