THOM BETTRIDGE: You and I have talked about this watch and how it disrupts a lot of different conventions in watchmaking. How has the watch community reacted to this?
MATTHEW M. WILLIAMS: A lot of the comments are about how nice this watch is coming from someone who doesn’t care much about traditional watch design. I do things from an aesthetic perspective, and initially, I thought it was polarizing between watch lovers and people who just want to wear something they love. Now, I think some of the people who were skeptical about some of these options are now excited about it.
TB: I gather from what you’re saying that there are some watch fans who are angry about the way things are received. Is this skepticism from those who defend the traditional way of doing things something you were familiar with when you first entered the luxury industry? Because when you founded ALYX, luxury goods were as old as watchmaking is now.
MMW: You know, at the end of the day, I’m just communicating something that I wish existed, which makes me feel like it should exist. I’m making things that I want to wear, and it’s great that that natural feel resonates with other people. I always strive in this direction.
TB: It’s always a good sign when a design comes out of necessity—when a designer says, “Hey, I want this thing that doesn’t exist yet, so I made it.”
MMW: This can get very spiritual, but I went to the Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern last week and he quoted this quote when he was entering the realm of abstraction. When he started painting all these paintings, he wasn’t standing on the canvas looking at what he was painting. He said something like, “I just wanted to reveal something that was already there.” And then, at the same time, I had recently started studying Buddhism, which is a similar concept. Any kind of achievement, or creative output, or amazing thing you’ve done or been able to achieve – it’s hard to take credit for it. What’s more, you’re just leveraging something that already exists. You’re just allowing something to come through, like a connection to whatever creative outlet you’re tuning into. So, you are just a conduit. I like this concept. This resonated with me because a lot of times I have a hard time explaining why I choose to do something. It felt like the right thing to do. It feels like it should be there. I can’t believe too much. It should exist. If it hadn’t been for me, if it hadn’t been for ALYX in this environment, some version of this idea would have emerged as another project, brand, idea or whatever. I believe. I believe that great creative products, projects, and ideas materialize on their own. It’s not necessarily the manufacturer who should take credit for this.
TB: Likewise, you almost have to relinquish control of your creative output.What you just told me about Guston reminds me of this thing John Cage said about Robert Rauschenberg white painting– They are like “landing zones for dust particles.” My interpretation is that if you paint an all-white painting, anything that falls on it becomes the subject of the painting. I see this in how you abstract time with your designs – the numbers and markers aren’t there, so you decide the time and the reader creates the time, not the watch. On an aesthetic level, this level of simplicity allows people to put their own spin on the design and use it however they wish.
MMW: I believe John Cage and Guston were friends as well. I felt like I read that in the exhibition.
TB: I personally think the chronograph feature you have is one of the most radical examples of what we’re talking about, because a chronograph is a tool designed to measure very precise units of time. The lack of any numbers on it is an extremely simple modernist gesture. You do something so small that it doesn’t even work the same way anymore. What does that decision look like? Do Audemars Piguet employees ask, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
MMW: They’re always very supportive. I don’t know what their internal dialogue was like before I had the conversation, but for me they were always very supportive every step of the way. I just had a discussion with François (Bennahmias, CEO of Audemars Piguet) about what could happen and continue with the aesthetic of the first watch we made.