Fashion

The One: Chanel’s J12 is Back in Bleu

May 28, 2025

The iconic Chanel J12 watch was originally born out of frustration. The fashion house’s longtime artistic director Jacques Hélleu, who joined Chanel in the 1950s and was responsible for many of its iconic ad campaigns and monochromatic brand identity, had been searching for a watch. He couldn’t find anything that he wanted to wear, so decided to dream up his perfect timepiece – which would lead to the creation of one of the most iconic and influential watches of all time, the J12.

Hélleu wanted a watch that was sporty, but chic. When sketching out his idea for the J12, he took inspiration from racing yachts – a personal passion of his. In fact, the name of the watch refers to the 12-meter J-Class yachts that are raced in the America’s Cup. In an homage to the streamlined hulls and sweeping curves of the boats, the J12 has a seamless case and bracelet design. Its clean, legible dial and functional rotating bezel (which can be used as a timer) are both beautiful and purposeful; just like every element on board a yacht must be.

(Image credit: Future/ Turi Lovik Kirknes)

What really set the watch apart was its use of ceramic, as it had not been widely used by watchmakers in 2000 when Chanel first launched the J12.

This was not your average pottery-shed ceramic, of course. The material used to craft not just the case but the bracelet of the J12 was a high-tech ceramic that is exceptionally hard (second only to diamonds), scratch-proof, lightweight, and incredibly glossy. It was produced in just one colour – black.

The J12 was not just revolutionary for its use of ceramic, but also its positioning as a gender-neutral watch – again, a concept that was not yet fully embraced by the watch world at the turn of the millennium. Its sleek, glossy look matched with bold proportions captured the zeitgeist, and was a frontrunner in the Noughties trend for chunky ‘boyfriend watches’ for women.

The J12 soon caught the attention of influential editors and celebrities, and would go on to become one of the most sought-after watches of its time. Everyone wanted a J12. While copycat styles quickly came onto the market, the technical capabilities needed to master high-tech ceramics kept Chanel ahead of the pack, and ignited its reputation as a serious watchmaker, not just a fashion house.

Over the past 25 years, the J12 has evolved. In 2003, Chanel released the equally iconic white ceramic J12, in keeping with Hélleu’s love of monochrome, which he considered to be a timeless combination – as did Coco Chanel. The horological heft of the watches increased as Chanel introduced tourbillons, moonphases, chronographs, and high-end mechanical movements to the J12 collection. In 2022, it introduced its first J12 movement that was made entirely in-house at Chanel.

While there has been the occasional use of other colours over the years – blue or pink dial accents, the addition of coloured gemstones, the gunmetal sheen of the J12 Chromatic (achieved by a ceramic-titanium blend) or the models that swapped ceramic for coloured crystal sapphire – the J12 collection has been steadfastly black or white. Until now.

The One: Chanel J12 Bleu

(Image credit: Future/ Turi Lovik Kirknes)

This year, to mark a quarter-century of this iconic watch, Chanel unveiled the J12 Bleu in a stormy-blue ceramic with a matte finish. The intense colour has often been used by the house in fashion and beauty, and its Chanel origin story can be traced back to the boxes used to house its 1932 Bijoux de Diamants jewellery collection (Chanel’s first experimentation with diamonds). It is the first time, however, that it has been used in watchmaking.

It is notoriously difficult to achieve new hues of high-tech ceramic, as the colours can often be unstable, making reproducing them in the exact same colour each time challenging. Mastering this specific shade of blue for the J12 Bleu took Chanel five years of experimentation.

“I dreamt of giving a colour to black, of illuminating it with blue,” says Arnaud Chastaingt, director of the Chanel Watchmaking Creation Studio, of the colour of the new J12 Bleu line. “The final choice of this particular blue was like an epiphany. I wanted a blue that has a rigorous elegance, a blue that is nearly black or a black that is nearly blue.”

Indeed, move this particular J12 Bleu Caliber 12.1 (one of nine J12 Bleu models) into different lights and you can see the ceramic switch from almost black in the shade, to a bright navy in the sunshine.

The moody aesthetic is continued on the dial. Rather than the bright, legible numbers of its predecessors, this J12 Bleu has glossy black numerals and hands. You have to look closely to see them, although flashes of white on the hands and above each hour marker help you to see through the dark. The date is also in white, positioned within a window quirkily placed between 4 and 5 o’clock.

Flip the watch and you’ll find a sapphire crystal caseback that allows a full view of the self-winding Manufacture Caliber 12.1 movement within, which is chronometer certified by COSC and has a power reserve of 70 hours.

Coco Chanel and Hélleu considered black the colour of mystery and eternity, and white the shade of perfection and purity, making them a perfectly opposing but complementary pairing to which they kept returning. But, of course, they aren’t colours: they are the absence of colour. What the J12 Bleu has created is a scintillating true hue that binds both darkness and light, making it both an exciting new chapter and a worthy heir to the monochrome legacy of the Chanel J12.