Black and White Has Never Looked as Chic as on This Chanel Watch
Above: The Chanel J12 Paradox watch in high-tech black-and-white ceramic, $8,050.
If you were to type Coco Chanel black and white into a search engine, you would return a wealth of pithy quotes and stylistic references attesting to her love of this pairing. After all, upon founding her eponymous fashion house in 1910, Coco Chanel embedded into our aesthetic lexicon a bounty of monochromatic tropes: little black dresses with a creamy camellia, say, or the juxtaposition of black lacquer and light carpeting, as in her rue Cambon abode in Paris. Today, the Chanel brand continues to highlight its founder’s preferred palette in its retail design. Consider the 60-foot-tall pearl necklace sculpture by Jean-Michel Othoniel that ELLE Decor A-List designer Peter Marino commissioned for the New York flagship.
It is only fitting, then, that in envisioning the latest iteration of its signature J12 ceramic timepiece, Chanel once again turned to high contrast. Originally launched in 2000 in all black, the J12 watch is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with the new J12 Paradox. This updated version is dual-toned, melding an asymmetrical black-and-white dial and bezel pieces into a seamless whole using the printing process of tampography. The result is a design that is playfully sly, like a calligraphic stroke of black ink on a white sheet of paper, and destined to be just as indelible.
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of ELLE Decor. SUBSCRIBE
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