Key Highlights
- FRANCK MULLER has unveiled an artistic collaboration with Kelly Dabbah, developed in creative dialogue with the brand’s Head Designer, Jean-Loup Glenat.
- The collection’s guiding concept balances childlike imagination with femininity and power — translating Kelly Dabbah’s large-scale artistic practice onto a watch dial.
- Both Kelly Dabbah and Jean-Loup Glenat describe the project as a genuinely challenging and fulfilling experience, pushing the boundaries of scale and expression.
- FRANCK MULLER‘s identity as a creatively expressive, disruptive watchmaking house is central to why this collaboration took shape.
- The behind-the-scenes film captures the personal exchange of ideas and inspirations that drove the collection from concept to finished timepiece.
A Meeting of Two Creative Worlds
Geneva-based FRANCK MULLER has long occupied a singular position in haute horlogerie — one defined not by restraint, but by a wilful embrace of colour, form, and artistic provocation. That reputation makes it a natural partner for collaborations that push watchmaking into genuinely unfamiliar territory. The new collection conceived with artist Kelly Dabbah is precisely that kind of project: a creative partnership in which two distinct visual languages were brought into conversation, tested against each other, and ultimately fused into a wearable object.
The collaboration came together through a direct dialogue between Kelly Dabbah and Jean-Loup Glenat, FRANCK MULLER’s Head Designer. Rather than a straightforward licensing arrangement, this was a genuine exchange — of inspirations, personal style, and shared ambition. That process, and the energy it generated, is what distinguishes the resulting collection from a simple co-branded release. The pieces carry the mark of two people working through ideas together, not simply placing a signature on a dial.
For GCC collectors and enthusiasts, the appeal of such collaborations is well established. The region’s luxury market has a strong appetite for limited artistic editions that carry a story and a recognisable creative identity. A FRANCK MULLER timepiece already speaks to an audience that values expressive design; a collaboration rooted in a personal artistic vision adds another layer of meaning that resonates in a market where individuality and craftsmanship are equally prized. Explore the full range of the maison’s output on the official FRANCK MULLER website.
The Concept: Childhood, Femininity, and Power
Kelly Dabbah’s starting point for the collection was a tension she wanted to hold in the same object: something that evokes the uninhibited energy of childhood, yet feels unambiguously powerful and feminine on the wrist. That is not an easy brief to fulfil, and she has acknowledged that it set the collaboration on a challenging course from the outset. The instinct was to create something different — to resist the familiar visual grammar of a luxury watch and arrive at something genuinely disruptive.
For Dabbah, the greatest challenge was one of scale. Her artistic practice operates at a scope that is at odds with the compact canvas of a watch dial. Condensing that expressive, often large-scale sensibility into a miniature format required both creative compromise and technical ingenuity. She has spoken directly about never having imagined her art contained within such a small surface — and about the collaborative effort of the entire FRANCK MULLER creative team in making that translation possible.
Jean-Loup Glenat and the FRANCK MULLER Design Philosophy
Head Designer Jean-Loup Glenat brought the perspective of a house that has never been afraid to be expressive or unconventional. His view of the collaboration centres on a conviction that FRANCK MULLER’s identity — built on creativity and a willingness to be different within the watchmaking industry — made it the right partner for Dabbah’s vision. The brand’s history of bold dial work, including pieces like the Cintree Curvex Color Medley, demonstrates the kind of chromatic and artistic ambition that Glenat brought to this project. His role was to ensure that the playful and powerful qualities Dabbah envisioned could survive the translation into a functional, finished timepiece without losing their character.
Disruption as a Design Principle
What emerges most clearly from the creative dialogue at the heart of this collection is that disruption was not incidental — it was the agreed objective from the beginning. Both Dabbah and Glenat describe the brief as a challenge precisely because the intention was to create something that stands apart from existing watchmaking conventions. FRANCK MULLER has built a reputation across decades on exactly this principle, from the invention of the Crazy Hours display to its consistently unconventional approach to case architecture. The Vanguard Crazy Hours lineage exemplifies that legacy of creative risk-taking that has defined the house.
Placing an artist’s sensibility — especially one rooted in vivid, expressive work — at the centre of a new watch design is a way of refreshing that disruptive principle. It invites an audience that may not have previously engaged with FRANCK MULLER to encounter the brand through a different entry point, while offering existing collectors something genuinely new. The result is a collection that belongs to both the artist and the maison, without feeling wholly owned by either.
Why It Matters
For luxury-watch enthusiasts across the GCC, the FRANCK MULLER and Kelly Dabbah collection represents the kind of creative ambition that elevates a timepiece beyond its technical function. Collectors in Dubai, Riyadh, and Doha who value both artistic provenance and distinctive watchmaking identity will find much to engage with in a project where the design process itself has been documented and shared. Watch the official creative dialogue between Kelly Dabbah and Jean-Loup Glenat in the campaign film on the Franck Muller Geneve channel to understand how the collection came to life.
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