Short on time? Rexhep Rexhepi was born in Kosovo in 1987 and arrived in Geneva as a boy in the late 1990s. He started at Patek Philippe at 14, moved on to the movement specialist BNB Concept and then F.P. Journe, and founded Akrivia in 2012 when he was about 25. His Chronomètre Contemporain won the Men's Watch prize at the 2018 GPHG, and in 2023 Louis Vuitton picked him for its first collaboration with an independent. Today he's one of the hardest watchmakers in the world to buy from.
Backstory
Most independent watchmakers have a story about a grandfather's workshop or a clock they took apart at age six. Rexhepi's is harder than that. His family left Kosovo during the war, and he joined his father in Geneva in 1998, when he was 11. Profiles of him say it was his father's watches that got him interested.
At 14 he was a trainee at Patek Philippe. That's young even by Swiss standards. He did his apprenticeship there and stayed on at the manufacture for a couple of years afterwards. If you want to learn how a watch should be finished, there aren't many better places to be a teenager.
BNB and Journe
From Patek he went to BNB Concept, a high-end movement developer that built complicated calibres for other brands. Reports from the time say he ended up running a team of more than ten watchmakers, many of them decades older than him. BNB no longer exists, but for a young watchmaker it was a crash course in building complications for brands that weren't his own.
Then came F.P. Journe, for a little over a year. He worked on some of the brand's most complicated pieces there. Look at a Journe Tourbillon Souverain, like the one at the top of this page, and you can see what that would have taught him: a man running his own name on the dial, making movements his own way, and selling to people who cared about how they were made.
Akrivia
In 2012, at around 25, he set up Atelier Akrivia in Geneva's Old Town. Akrivia comes from the Greek for precision. He reportedly funded it himself, partly by selling his car and some of his own watches.
The first watch, the AK-01, came out in 2013. It was a tourbillon with a monopusher chronograph, which is about as ambitious as a debut gets. Early Akrivia pieces leaned on tourbillons, paired with chronographs or jumping hours, and the cases had a distinctive tonneau shape. They were impressive, but in hindsight they read like a young watchmaker proving he could do anything.
The Chronomètre Contemporain
The turn came in 2018. The Chronomètre Contemporain was a simple time-only watch with his own name, Rexhep Rexhepi, on the dial. It had a 38mm case, a black Grand Feu enamel dial, a small seconds and a hand-finished manual-wind movement. There was nothing flashy about it.
That was the point. Without a tourbillon to look at, you notice the finishing: the bevels, the black polish and the way the dial sits in the case. It's very much in the tradition of Philippe Dufour's Simplicity. That November it won the Men's Watch prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève, and from then on the waiting list was the story.
Louis Vuitton
In 2023 Louis Vuitton launched a programme of collaborations with independent watchmakers, and Rexhepi was its first partner. The result was the LVRR-01 Chronographe à Sonnerie: a chronograph that chimes, in a reworked platinum Tambour case, limited to 10 pieces. The case was made by Jean-Pierre Hagmann, Akrivia's case-maker and one of the most respected in the trade.
It was a strange pairing on paper, a fashion house and one of the most purist watchmakers working today. It worked because Louis Vuitton let the movement lead.
Why It Matters
Rexhepi makes very few watches, and demand runs far ahead of supply. On the secondary market his pieces trade well above retail, and auction houses treat the Chronomètre Contemporain as a modern classic. That's a lot of weight on a watchmaker still in his thirties.
The honest downside is access. For almost everyone, buying a Rexhepi means waiting years, or paying the secondary market a lot more for the privilege. Some collectors find that frustrating, and fair enough. But it's hard to begrudge a watchmaker whose reputation rests on doing fewer things, better.
Final Thoughts
What makes the Rexhepi story interesting isn't just the speed. It's the direction. He started with tourbillons and chronographs, then got famous for a time-only watch. It's the opposite of what most young brands do, and it's a big reason serious collectors trust him.
We don't have a Rexhepi in stock. The closest thing in the safe is from the workshop where he trained: our F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain.
