CIO Bulletin

IRIS ALT.: The 1st luxury women’s watch that is eco-responsible, showcasing creativity and progress through recycled materials

Luxury is most commonly associated to wealth, but true luxury is not always defined by financial status. True luxury comes with the ability to appreciate and recognize craftsmanship, quality and standard. Luxury watches in specific are a piece of accessory that are often understated; however, they make excellent trophies and are a visual pleaser, emphasizing a person’s exquisite taste.

IRIS ALT. is a luxury women’s watch that is designed for consumers who demand luxury and quality in this new generation. They not only use laboratory diamonds, but also maintain an eco-responsible brand, that prioritizes transparency, ethics, traceability and sustainability.

CIO Bulletin had the privilege of talking to the co-founder Valérie Minassian about the impact and growth the company has had so far.

Q. How did the idea of starting a premium watch brand like IRIS ALT. come about? What is the story behind its inception?

The idea of IRIS ALT. came about in 2019, while I discovered that the jewelry industry was starting to use lab-grown diamonds. As the granddaughter of a man who was once a coal miner and who used to start his day in the “hanging room,” I was sensitized very early on by the extreme conditions of daily life in the mines. The choice to use diamonds, which grow in laboratories, was therefore an obvious one.

At that time, some jewelry brands had been created, but no watchmaking brands. I saw an opportunity to take a different path in this industry. I started to look for a designer, and I easily convinced Eliska Stepankova that we could try something new.

As new materials were also emerging, we decided that our watch not only should have lab-grown diamonds but must also use as many recycled materials as possible. So we started to look for some materials that were watch-compatible and for their manufacturers.

However, we had an issue: we wanted to work with European, French, or Swiss manufacturers because we wanted to have the best partners and the lowest carbon footprint. This finally led to the idea of having an evolutionary product seemed important as it offered the opportunity to change the design while keeping the basis intact.

Q. What are the company’s values and principles, and how does it set itself apart from its contemporaries?

Our brand and our products are a manifesto, and my role is to ensure that the brand can develop while keeping in mind our vision: to design products with environmental issues integrated into the design phase (eco-design, LCA, circular economy).

Eliska and I have both been aware very early on of future issues related to the climate, the rarefaction of resources, and the disappearance of biodiversity, and, since 2019, we started to think about an environmentally friendly watch.

For me, designing a product obviously implies not making a choice between ecology, technology, and craftsmanship but rather combining these prerequisites from the eco-design phase.

Eliska, for her part, has decided to re-interrogate her design practice in order to be part of a more responsible logic and to produce better and differently. In this context, she followed the Master Nature-Inspired Design of ENSCI Les Ateliers in Paris in order to reinforce her knowledge of the different possible levers to take up the challenges of a society more in harmony with the Earth. She is particularly interested in the issue of materials and their inevitable evolution under future constraints.

Creating truly feminine models in a watchmaking world that tends to feminize its masculine models by playing with colors and dimensions is our raison d’être. We are looking for designs with a unique personality, sober enough to last over time but perfectly up-to-date, always elegant but never classic. Nowadays, it seems irrelevant to us to use a battery that has a life span of 2 years. That’s why we have chosen Swiss automatic movements that have an unlimited life span and are proven to be well-made.

It is this unique combination of recycled materials and their specific designs that make IRIS ALT. watches feminine, precious, and desirable.

Q. What materials and craftsmanship techniques does IRIS ALT. prioritize in order to maintain its high-quality production?

We select avant-garde materials, either recycled or up-cycled, that have been tested for their durability and their perfect suitability for watchmaking. These materials, which have required time in research and development, are necessarily high-end and have, for the most part, won awards.

Our case and metal parts are made from nearly 100% recycled stainless steel; our dial is made from Zep 1510, which is a new material made from ashes; and our bracelet is made from a salmon skin sourced in the agri-food industry, up-cycled and tanned to become marine leather.

Q. Can you elaborate more on Watch Aëlla and what makes it the defining standard of the brand?

Originally planned in 2019, the project took time to hatch because it was necessary to find partners who could meet the demanding specifications requested, which specified using the maximum amount of recycled materials in order to offer a real alternative to the existing women’s watch market. In addition to these criteria, these manufacturers had to be European, at best French or Swiss, in order to encourage short circuits. Our partners are almost all located in the Franco-Swiss Jura region, which is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its watchmaking know-how and is home to the majority of European watchmaking companies whose technologies are renowned throughout the world.

As for the design, we chose to propose a watch with a small diameter (26mm), refined, discreet, but specific, and as Eliska created it in an eco-friendly way, it can evolve over time.

Q. How do you manage to create an eco-designed women’s watch with laboratory diamonds that keeps up with sustainability and design?

We believe that the luxury sector is a leader in innovation, creativity, and progress. Luxury products astonish, surprise, dazzle, and enchant consumers, whatever the trends of the moment. The real requirement of luxury today is to be responsible, committed, and proactive on social and environmental issues.

We do not want to convince people that lab-grown diamonds are better for the planet than mined diamonds, as we know that nothing is perfect. We, however, want to have perfect traceability for our products.

As products are more eco-friendly today, combining eco-conception with watchmaking is a challenge that we have already taken up. We are always looking to go further in order to offer timepieces that are up-to-date and are currently looking for investors to scale up.

A brief biography of Valérie Minassian, co-founder

Valérie Minassian is the co-founder of IRIS ALT. She graduated from a business school in France. At the start of her career, she got what was initially a short-term job at the company KENZO, eventually spending seven years developing accessories for the brand.

Over the years, she has worked in a variety of environments, including SMEs and large groups in Paris and Geneva, in areas like watchmaking, jewelry, eyewear, leather goods, perfume, ready-to-wear, lingerie, and more. She recently graduated with an Executive MBA in Global Fashion Management from the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris, which has a long-time partnership with the FIT in New York.