Over the last ten years, Paris has emerged as a leading city worldwide in microbrand-style watchmaking—led by Serica and Baltic—but a lesser-known brand is making a case for entry into that conversation, and that brand is Laps. Founded in 2015 by Antonin Mercier, Laps built its name on graphic dials that were hand-assembled in limited editions using unconventional materials like wood, tobacco leaf, exotic skins, and archival prints. With its latest release, the brand steps away from the loud, design-forward quartz pieces that made its name and into something more restrained—an automatic watch built with subtle and balanced style.
Paris is obviously known for its major fashion houses, institutions that have stood for centuries, but I come from a world of menswear, and especially over the last few years there’s been a wave of smaller, standalone shops popping up alongside those institutions—Husbands, Rubirosa, De Bonne Facture, among others—and I’d argue the same divide is playing out in watches. Complementing the stalwarts are names like Baltic and Serica, and with their new Arche line, I think Laps can now enter that conversation too.
Form and function always stay top of mind for me, and sometimes I struggle with watches that skew too far in one direction or the other. Perhaps like a pendulum, my own taste sways from one side to the other from time to time, but its natural resting point is the middle—which is exactly where the brand’s latest release, the Arche, lands for me. Throw in the fact that it comes in under $1,000—and I had to see one for myself.
The Arche marks Laps’ tenth anniversary and is also the brand’s first automatic watch. This new model is the opening chapter of a new range called Studio, distinct from the quartz-powered Prima line that has defined the brand since its 2015 launch. Laps has built its reputation on a wide range of case and dial designs, spanning from restrained to avant-garde. It’s a similar story to what Dennison has done with its own revival—a brand digging back into a previous era’s case language and finding that the era is having a moment again: smaller sizes, geometric shapes, sharper lines. Dennison relaunched around its old cushion-case dress watches from the 1960s and ’70s, and there’s the same instinct at play with the Arche.
The Arche marks a real shift for the brand—a departure from a wide, eclectic catalog toward a more condensed, refined offering. I think it complements the Prima line nicely and opens Laps up beyond its reputation for graphic, one-off dials. The collection comes in two variations, Serie 01 and Serie 02, each offered in two colorways, and both draw from the same architectural reference—the textured facade of a building by Korean design studio WGNB, which shifts in appearance as the light moves across it. The Serie 01 carries this through a matte finish in green and ivory; the Serie 02 renders it in enamel, in black and blue, with a glossy finish that adds real depth against the matte of the Serie 01.
While the design on the four dial variants varies slightly, the constant is the case, which is where the watch derives its name. The 37.5mm x 9.8mm-thick 316L steel case is flanked by the watch’s signature: the arch-shaped lugs, which are certainly finished nicely. These aren’t stamped as part of the case—they’re individually machined and fitted onto the middle case, which is how Laps gets such controlled angles and clean surface finishing on them. It’s already a small watch, so the curved lugs don’t need to do any work making it feel smaller. Which tells me the shaping is mostly aesthetic, which fits nicely into the overall design of the watch. It’s subtle, but it makes the watch hug the wrist even more.
The bezel is also worth noting here, as by my eye it reads flat rather than domed or stepped. It’s the same instinct that WGNB draws on in building the dial: a flat plane that lets its finish and geometry do the talking instead of ornament or added dimension. There’s a nice finishing contrast built into the bezel itself, between a vertically brushed flat surface and a polished bevel. It gives the dial a clean edge to sit inside, with nothing competing for attention or catching stray reflections. It’s a quiet decision, but it’s the kind of restraint that reads as confidence rather than a missed opportunity, and it keeps the whole face of the watch feeling like one considered surface instead of a stack of parts.
The dial and hands certainly harken to an Art Deco vibe. I’m sure some will say that the inclusion of the date window feels out of place here, and I can see how that argument would be made. However, I think the brand considered this, and its inclusion at 4 o’clock certainly feels better than at 3. That said, the inclusion doesn’t bother me at all, especially given the diamond shape of the window and its background matching the color of the dial. For me, it feels right at home.
The hands carry the aesthetic even further. I love the geometric shapes they form together at any given moment, depending on the time. The indices complement them nicely too, echoing that same geometry across the dial rather than sitting apart from it. On the Serie 02 specifically, even the seconds hand gets the same attention—it carries a bevel matched to the dial, so its sweep catches the light with every second, a small kinetic detail I didn’t expect but really appreciated once I noticed it. It’s powered by the Miyota 9015 with a 42-hour power reserve, a screw-in and open display caseback, and 5 ATM of water resistance, and is assembled entirely in Paris.
Competition at this price point comes from a couple of clear directions. Lorier’s Astra is the clearest value comp—$599, running the Miyota 9015 with a date window. Baltic’s HMS, also Paris-made, plays similar territory with its own art-deco sector dial, starting around $370 and running up to $1,600 for the rarer dials—probably the most direct hometown competition that Laps has. With that said, I think the Arche has carved out a nice place for itself at this price point. I’ll definitely be stopping by the boutique next time I’m in Paris.
