Carole Forestier-Kasapi, the brand’s director of high-end watchmaking and movements strategy, sees the industry changing but “we are not there yet.”
Carole Forestier-Kasapi Courtesy of Tag Heuer
Carole Forestier-Kasapi, who is director of high-end watchmaking and movements strategy at Tag Heuer, is behind some of the industry’s most striking complications.
The French engineer has developed a centrally mounted carousel tourbillon that is the basis for the Ulysse Nardin Freak watch design; the Rotonde de Cartier Astrocalendaire, displaying everything on concentric circles, and, most recently, Tag Heuer’s Monaco Split-seconds Chronograph.
In addition to some 16 patents, her work has garnered a raft of accolades, such as the Prix de la Fondation Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1997, the Best Watchmaker prize at the 2012 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève and the 2021 Prix Gaia awarded by the International Museum of Horology.
But the most complicated thing she’s ever done? Designing watch movements while female.
Born in Paris to watchmakers who owned a workshop that specialized in restoring mechanical timepieces, there was never any doubt on what industry she’d be in. After school, the naturally curious child would spend all her time taking movements apart.
“Unlike my parents and brother, I wasn’t interested in how to make them work again,” she recalled. “I wanted to understand how they worked.”
Hooked and determined to carve a path in watches, there was only one option: studying in Switzerland, where she moved at age 16 to enroll in the watchmaking school of La Chaux-de-Fonds.
With her degree in watchmaking and specialization in movement development under her belt, Forestier-Kasapi cut her teeth at Zenith and Audemars Piguet before joining the watchmaking division of Compagnie Financière Richemont in 2000. In 2005, she became head of movement creation at Cartier, a position she held for 15 years.
In a nutshell, she describes her work as “going from a blank page all the way to certification” inventing new mechanisms.
But being a woman in watchmaking, particularly in a field as technical as movement development, feels a little like being forever at your very first job.
“When you start, you’re expected to prove yourself,” she said. “In this very conservative and masculine profession, you have to prove yourself every single day when you’re a woman.”
One point of satisfaction is seeing the moment people’s mindsets evolve.
“At the beginning, they’re wait-and-see attitude as if waiting for you to fail,” she said. “And suddenly, there’s a switch and they become driving forces [too]. It’s beautiful but I also want to tell them, ‘Get on board from the start, it’s going to be fine, relax.’”
The 41mm Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph. Courtesy of Tag Heuer
Even if the situation varies from brand to brand, workshop to workshop, the dearth of women in her field continues to be jarring.
“It always frustrates me because it’s such a waste,” she said. “Having different styles, different points of view is the richness of a team.”
Plus, women are not as absent from watchmaking as they would appear. “In any workshop, there are many women, they’re extremely numerous in delicate and repetitive operations,” she pointed out.
She takes part in annual awareness days in Geneva with school-age youngsters to combat gender stereotyping in professional orientation and mentors younger generations of women in watchmaking, particularly at Tag Heuer. Her current mentee is a movement designer who studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne school, best known as “EPFL.”
While Forestier-Kasapi expressed satisfaction at the situation at the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned watchmaker, where parity has been achieved in the company’s executive committee, she is aware that the road is still long for the rest of the industry.
“At the end of a meeting, [a visitor] said it was the first time he’s discussed technical matters with a woman and that in his company, there was a ban on female hires,” she said. “That’s a reality check of what’s going on in some parts of the watch industry in 2024.”
Still, change is afoot.
She expressed satisfaction at seeing more women in STEM-based professions. “I recently went to CERN [the European Organization for Nuclear Research] and there are a number of female researchers,” she said. “Things are moving in the right direction.”
But with still only a handful of women sprinkled in the annual photograph of the Société Suisse de Chronométrie, a watchmaking industry professional association, “we’re not there yet.”
For all the complications Forestier-Kasapi deals with and the complexity of the watchmaking industry, her advice to women — or anyone, really — is straightforward.
“I am convinced that with passion you can move mountains and that’s the most important,” she said. “So go for a profession you’re passionate about and no one can stop you. It’s not a question of gender.”
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