PARIS 1,RUE DE LA PAIX LANGE & SÖHNE
Next to Place Vendome in the heart of the luxury Parisian shops, A. Lange & Söhne hast just opened its brand-new boutique, its tenth store in the world.
An opportunity to step into this manufacture’s fascinating history and to discover incredible handcrafted pieces between limited editions and boutique-exclusives.
Over the two floors of the 60m2 refurbished like a very modern lounge style apartment you will discover the ‘Experience Library’, which offers insights into the history of A. Lange & Söhne through a collection of carefully selected exhibits. Furthermore, you can admire the manufacture’s eventful history, which was marked by numerous innovative developments, while ‘The Wall of Parts’, an astonishing wall-filling installation with hundreds of hand-finished movement parts, illustrates the brand’s quest for the latest technical perfection and the highest level of craftmanship. Visitors are invited to experience the lounge-bar.
Wilhelm Schmid, Lange CEO, feels happy about this Parisian opening: “The boutique on Rue de la Paix allows us to establish direct contact with our French clients and respond to their individual needs. With this new location, we are showing our appreciation for an ever-grounding community of collectors in France. It is also especially significant because the historical roots of our manufacture are closely linked to the French capital.”
In 1900, A. Lange & Söhne’s Centennial Tourbillon No. 41000 became a sensation at the Paris International Exposition. The exquisitely crafted and technically extremely complex pocket watch with a one-minute tourbillon, a fusée-and-chain transmission, and an UP/DOWN power-reserve indicator inspired Walter Lange and Günter Blümelin to develop the TOURBILLON “Pour le Mérite” after the revitalization of the brand in 1990.
A bit of history is necessary to understand why Walter Lange was the spiritual force behind the Lange revival, something he head long hoped for and that wouldn’t have happened without the IWC Executive Team.
“The history of Glashütte watchmaking was the topic of a cosy fireside chat in the winter of 1989, a chat that also included Hannes Pantli, the marketing chief od IWC at the time.
And this is why it was reported to me later: suddenly the name A. Lange & Söhne, as the epithome of the Glashütte watchmaker tradition, was mentioned, together with the idea of reviving the great name in particular and Glashütte in general with new, exclusive watches. They then remembered that I, the great-grandson of the company founder Adolph Lange, lived in the West Germany side and that Jürgen King, head of development at IWC, knew me. I was just drinking coffee with my wife when Jürgen King called me at home in Pforzheim a few days after the discussion and put me in touch with Günther Blümlein – the initial step toward the new grounding of the Lange manufacture in Glasshütte.” – Walter Lange, The Revival of Time.
By: Mário de Castro
A.Lange & Söhne 1, rue de la Paix , 75002 Paris
