What Do Cartier, Richard Mille, and Franck Muller Have In Common? Wouldn't You Like Tonneau!

Reading about watches can often feel like cracking open a textbook You may have noticed another, inscrutable term floating around in the watch ecosystem: tonneau In the watch world, it describes any piece shaped like a curvy rectangle.

The history of lowercase-t tonneau watches starts with the uppercase-T Tonneau Louis Cartier's greatest contribution to watches was his inextinguishable belief that what we wear on our wrist doesn't need to be circular: he designed the square Santos, the rectangular Tank, and the melty Crash In more recent history, newcomer watch brands have leveraged the tonneau shape to distinguish themselves from the rounded competition.

Tonneau watches were much less common, and the design was a way for Franck Muller to distinguish the brand and make it almost immediately identifiable. . Source