The house began with a marriage: in 1895, Esther “Estelle” Arpels, daughter of an Alsace stone-cutter, married Alfred Van Cleef, from a family dealing in polished stones in Amsterdam and Paris. In 1906, Alfred and his brother-in-law Charles Arpels opened a boutique at 22  Place Vendôme. Van Cleef & Arpels never made movements; its expertise lay in cases, dials, jewels, and turning watches into jewelry. That approach found its fullest expression in the house’s Art Deco cocktail watches and beyond: elegant, highly jeweled pieces designed to be worn as much for their beauty as for their timekeeping. A tradition we particularly admire in our curation of vintage Van Cleef & Arpels watches.