Rexhep Rexhepi had been quiet for a while, and in independent watchmaking, quiet usually means something is being built. What emerged in Geneva in April 2026 was the RRCHF, the Chronograph Flyback, the first chronograph from the watchmaker's eponymous brand and the third release from the house he established in 2018 after his years with Akrivia. It arrives four years after his last major launch, the chiming-chronograph LVRR-01 made with Louis Vuitton, and it completes a set: a time-only watch, a chiming watch, and now a chronograph.
The movement is entirely new. A column-wheel architecture with a lateral clutch allows the flyback function, resetting the chronograph to zero and restarting it with a single push of the pusher, and despite the complication the watch measures only 9.7mm thick within a 40mm case. The thickness is the technical achievement here. A chronograph is a second gear train layered onto the movement, and fitting a full column-wheel chronograph, including a jumping 60-minute counter, into a slim dress-watch profile required rearranging the movement's components from the ground up rather than stacking them. The lateral clutch, the traditional choice for the finest chronographs, demands precise adjustment to avoid the seconds hand stuttering on engagement; that Rexhepi chose it over the more forgiving vertical clutch is a statement of intent.
The dial is grand feu enamel, offered in stormy blue for the platinum version and black for rose gold. Three smoked sapphire disks carry the indications: a time-displaying subdial at twelve, small seconds at seven, and the jumping minute counter at four. The arrangement is deliberately unusual, pushing conventional time-telling to the periphery and giving the chronograph the centre of the dial. It is a statement about what this watch is for: the elapsed time is the point, the time of day is the footnote.
Through the sapphire caseback, the finishing is everything Rexhepi's reputation promises: hand-finished bridges, sharp interior and exterior angles, straight-grained levers, the column wheel itself. And the watch represents a structural milestone beyond its mechanics. Over the past few years the company has brought case-making, enamelling and dial-making in-house, so that essentially everything on the RRCHF, down to the hand-stitched nubuck strap, is designed, built and finished in its Geneva workshops. All dials for current and future watches will be made in-house, and most, by the look of the RRCHF, will be enamel.
The flyback itself deserves a note. Developed for pilots who needed to time successive legs of a flight without stopping, it is the chronograph complication with the most genuine tool-watch heritage, and also the most demanding to execute well, since the reset and restart must happen in a single motion without the hands stuttering. That Rexhepi chose it for his first chronograph, rather than a simpler cam-actuated construction, tells you where his ambitions sit.
Production is 24 pieces in platinum and 24 in rose gold, at a reported price of around CHF 150,000. Rexhepi's first two releases each won the men's watch prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Geneve, the industry's most watched award. The RRCHF makes the hat-trick attempt explicit. Given that his steel AK-06 set a CHF 3 million auction record at Phillips in May 2026, and that independent watchmaking has rarely commanded this much of the market's attention, the RRCHF will not lack for an audience. The question is whether 48 watches can satisfy one.
