A Krayon Purist Love Affair

Once upon a time not so long ago, independent watch collectors acquired pieces they loved knowing they would lose at least 20% of value – yet that was the price of enjoyment and stewardship. Fast forward 15 years to 2026, today’s secondary market prices influence tremendously why people collect a certain watch maker. The current perception is that “you can get paid” to wear and enjoy some very difficult to get timepieces, thus attracting an infinite number of collectors to certain beautiful brands, and in many cases influencing what they like. The irony of this mentality is that collectors are mixing short-term timeframes with long-term, the latter of which they truly do not know and simply speculate on. Krayon is still collected by the pure lovers of the brand: in the near term, you break-even. So let’s dig in at what the purists love about the creations of Remi and Fei.

First, the reason the Krayon lovers enjoy their watches is a combination of useful complications with incredibly elegant and beautiful aesthetics. To create new ways of displaying calendars like Krayon has done requires you to have a deep engineering mind, which often does not rhyme with a creator’s sense of aesthetics. Arguably the best watches in history are unique in that the creators have an eye for beauty and engineering at the same time, which is rare.
Second, Remi and Fei are as authentic as they come. Yes, they run an incredibly organized, clean and efficient Atelier in Neuchatel, which is a good sign as a business, but they are not salespeople. When you get to spend quality time with Remi and Fei, you discover new aspects of their personality which their introverted and shy nature first hides. Remi can open like a flower upon a nice dinner full of great wine. Fei is a bit more outgoing, but having Chinese roots naturally creates a cultural barrier with Western collectors. However, you can notice how much she likes artisanal champagne. Both love the arts and nature. Beautiful paintings and the majestic beauty of planet earth are often inspirations for their dial designs. They also blossom when talking about their daughter and when you ask them for explanations on what drove them to create certain movements and how they are accomplished.

Third, the collectors of Krayon. You know these people are not speculators, and you know they careless for what others think or collect social validation on Instagram or auction results. The Krayon collectors are independent thinkers, which arguably rhymes quite well with independent watch makers. The collectors and the timepieces belong to each other in a very authentic way.

The first creation was an incredible achievement allowing the wearer to adjust longitude and latitude via a pusher and the crown for any location in the world, which then allows for the proper display of the daily sunrise and sunset in an elegant and intuitive way. That first watch is a grail piece for Krayon collectors as less than 10 were ever made.
The Anywhere adapted the Everywhere to a watch where the location is fixed but can be changed by Krayon’s workshop. It allowed the watch to also get slimmer with a manual wound movement only. This brings me to another reason Krayon watches are incredible: they have perfect proportions, case and lug designs: the Anywhere comes in at 39mm by 9.5mm shrinking the Everywhere which is 42mm by 11.7mm. The Anyday has exactly the same proportions as the Anywhere, 39mm by 9.5mm. What is amazing is that both the Anywhere and the Anyday are remarkably complicated watches, but look simple: the Anywhere has 432 components inside the 39 by 9.5 case whereas the Anyday has 378 components in the same case size. The result: they wear extremely comfortably.

The Anyday has created a new way to show a month’s week days and weekends in the outer dial ring. This in itself avoids the odd and ugly date windows in timepieces, which apart from Lange just feel they do not belong in the design. How many times I am at work trying to plan my weekends with family and friends and I pull out my phone to check what days to schedule the activity? Many. This is what makes the Anyday so useful in addition to beautiful.
The last aspect of Krayon worth highlighting is their special and Métier d’Art dials. One of the reasons I fell in love with Krayon was the Anywhere auctioned at the charity event Only Watch in 2023. This one-of-a-kind timepiece features a miniature painting inspired by an artwork called Coastal Scene by Belgian painter Theo Van Rysselberghe in neo-impressionist style. In my humble opinion, it is the most beautiful watch I have ever seen.

Krayon also has many other special edition dials for the Anywhere, such as the Azure (small alveoli filled by a Swiss enameling artist in various shades of blue); the Aurora (titanium case and a gorgeous green achieved via atomic layer deposition); the Arborea (a tribute to Henri Rousseau with a mosaic interpretation of The Virgin Forest at Sunset); the Andromeda piece unique made for a Hong Kong collector (featuring the Andromeda galaxy); a piece unique for Jean Todt (inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night); the PacMan (a fun piece bringing Remi and Fei back to their childhood memories); the Parhelion (truly astonishing shade of blue gemset piece inspired by the unique sky in Greenland); the Astraea (blue, green and transparent gemset piece with mother of pearl dial); and others not yet released to the public are in the works.
Hope you enjoyed reading.