Franck Muller

Cintrée Curvex and Vanguard

The Cintrée Curvex is the shape the brand is built on: a tonneau case curved in two planes so it sits flat on the wrist despite its length, with exaggerated Breguet-style numerals across the dial. Vanguard is the modern, sportier reading of it, with an applied rubber-and-metal case construction and bold indices. V32 is the women's size, V45 the full-size men's, and Racing and Yachting add colour treatments and strap changes.

Colour and complications

Color Dreams puts a different colour on each numeral and is one of the most recognisable dials in modern watchmaking. Long Island takes the rectangle rather than the tonneau, Casablanca is the cushion-cased sports line, and Liberty and Ronde cover the remaining shapes. Behind the styling, Franck Muller has produced genuinely serious complications, and the Master of Complications signature on the dial is not marketing alone.

Movements and complications

It is easy to read Franck Muller as styling alone, which undersells it. The house built its name in the early 1990s on genuinely difficult work, including tourbillons, perpetual calendars, split-seconds chronographs and the Aeternitas Mega, one of the most complicated wristwatches ever produced. Most references you will actually wear use robust automatic calibres, and the shaped movements in the Cintrée Curvex cases are purpose-built rather than round movements dropped into a tonneau.

Sizing, condition and enquiry

Shaped cases are hard to judge from a photograph, because a V45 measures far longer than its width suggests. Send us your wrist size and we will tell you how a given reference sits. Gem-set bezels are identified as factory or aftermarket. We inspect in-house, note box and papers where present, quote price-on-request pieces on enquiry, and buy and trade Franck Muller.