Frederique Constant Classics Premiere 38.5mm Mens Watch

Peter Stas and Aletta Bax, a Dutch couple, founded Frederique Constant in 1988 with a straightforward objective: make Swiss watches with genuine watchmaking content at prices well below where that content normally starts. The name combines those of two ancestors, Frédérique Schreiner and Constant Stas, the latter a manufacturer of watch dials from the 1900s.

The company designed its own movement, the FC-910 Heart Beat, in 1994 — an aperture cut into the dial to expose the balance wheel, which became the brand's signature and is now widely copied. It began manufacturing calibres in-house in 2004, an unusual step at its price point, and has since produced over thirty in-house movements including perpetual calendars, tourbillons, and a monolithic silicon oscillator replacing the traditional escapement entirely.

That last development, the Slimline Monolithic of 2021, was a serious technical achievement: a single silicon component oscillating at 40 Hz, delivering high-frequency regulation without lubrication.

Frederique Constant also produced one of the first Swiss-made connected watches, the Horological Smartwatch, with analogue hands and hidden activity tracking.

The company built a manufacture in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, shares it with Alpina, and was acquired by Citizen in 2016. It also owns the vintage-focused Ateliers deMonaco.