Philippe Stern, the Patek Philippe Leader Who Shaped Modern Mechanical Watchmaking, Dies at 87

Philippe Stern built his career on a bet almost everyone told him he would lose. Through the 1970s and '80s, as cheap quartz movements gutted the Swiss industry and rivals shuttered or were sold off, he kept Patek Philippe making mechanical watches by hand, on the conviction that a certain kind of buyer would always want them. He was right, and the watch world we have now is largely the one he wagered on. Stern, the third generation of his family to run the Geneva manufacture, died on June 14. He was 87. Patek Philippe announced his death without giving a cause.

"History will prove that Patek Philippe would not exist as we know it today without Mr. Philippe Stern," said John Reardon, the former senior vice president and international head of watches at Christie's and the founder of Collectability. "His tireless work, particularly from the 1970s through the 1990s, not only redefined the company but also redefined the industry."

Born in Geneva in 1938, Stern came up the long way. He joined the family company in 1963 and went to New York to learn the business at the Henri Stern Watch Agency, the brand's American distributor, then returned to Geneva and rotated through its departments. By the 1970s he was at his father Henri's side on the decisions that set the company's course. One of them was the Nautilus, the steel sports watch Patek launched in 1976 at a price that rivaled its gold models, and one that now commands secondary-market sums once unthinkable for steel.

Stern was named general director in 1977, took the presidency in 1993, and ran Patek Philippe until 2009, when he handed it to his son Thierry and became honorary president. His answer to the crisis was not to retreat but to build. In the early 1980s, with quartz at its peak, he set his watchmakers loose on the most complicated portable timepiece ever attempted. It took nine years. The Calibre 89 that emerged was a pocket watch carrying 33 complications, and Patek unveiled it at the company's 150th anniversary in 1989. It was less a product than a dare: a hand-built rebuke to the idea that the mechanical watch had run out of things to prove. On the survival of the company through those years, Patek was plain. "Despite the public's apparent lack of interest, he was convinced that traditional timepieces had a future and believed that a discerning clientele would always prefer fine craftsmanship, exclusivity and exquisite artistry to mass production," the company said.

In 2001 he left the industry something more durable than any single watch: the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva, which pulled antique clocks, rare pocket watches, and the company's own history under one roof. For most collectors, that will be the monument. Reardon saw a second legacy behind the public one. "His public legacy will no doubt be the Patek Philippe Museum. For me, his private legacy was that of a mentor who taught a generation about true leadership, and showed that listening first is always more valuable than speaking. To me, he is the very definition of a scholar and a gentleman."

Listening is the thing people keep returning to. It was how he read Patek's international and emerging markets, and how he held a company together through its worst decade, by taking in the room before he spoke. It surfaced in small encounters too, like the one Kelly Yoch, the manager of Altier Jewelers in Boca Raton and a former senior Patek Philippe consultant, recalled. "Meeting Philippe Stern for the first time was an absolute honor. We had a moment. He asked my opinion on a time piece. I answered truthfully and it wasn't as favorable as the rest of the comments from my peers. Mr. Stern took the time to sit with me and understand my answer. The best part is that he agreed with me. He had the same feelings. It was a beautiful moment because he took the time to truly understand my position. I will never forget that because this was a man of such grace and beautiful disposition."

Patek Philippe is still independent, still family-owned, and still building watches by hand, now under Thierry. That it remains all three at once may be the truest measure of what his father left behind. The Stern family has our condolences.