Kevin O’Leary’s One-of-a-Kind David Candaux
The entrepreneur and collector made a private visit to the Le Solliat atelier during Watches and Wonders Geneva to receive his unique red DC6 Titanium, commissioned exclusively for him.
There are watch collectors, and then there are collectors who understand that the rarest thing in Haute Horlogerie is not a complication or a case material but a genuine relationship between the person wearing the watch and the person who made it. Kevin O’Leary, the entrepreneur, investor, and television personality whose watch collection has become one of the most-discussed in the world, belongs in the second category. And this past April, during Watches and Wonders Geneva, he made a private pilgrimage to the place that has earned its place in independent Swiss watchmaking: the atelier of David Candaux, tucked into the hills of Le Solliat in the Vallée de Joux, to receive a timepiece made just for him.
David Candaux: An Independent Watchmaker Born of the Vallée de Joux
Before understanding what makes this visit remarkable, it helps to understand who David Candaux is and why his workshop in Le Solliat occupies such a singular position in contemporary independent watchmaking.
Candaux is a Swiss watchmaker and engineer who founded his eponymous brand in 2017, building it from the ground up in the Vallée de Joux, the remote Swiss mountain valley that has functioned for centuries as the spiritual and technical cradle of haute horlogerie. The valley’s long winters and isolated culture shaped generations of craftsmen whose names are now synonymous with the highest standards of mechanical watchmaking.
A Workshop Where Patents Are Born
What distinguishes Candaux from many of his contemporaries in the independent sector is his commitment to genuine invention. His atelier is a place of origination, where new ideas are developed, patented, and brought into the world rather than where existing ones are refined and repackaged. The brand holds multiple patents that have meaningfully enriched 21st-century watchmaking’s technical vocabulary, and every reference in the collection reflects a process conceived, engineered, and finished entirely in-house, from a blank page through to the finished object on a collector’s wrist.
His signature complication, the 30-degree inclined flying tourbillon, appears across the collection as a recurring architectural statement, one that embodies Candaux’s approach to every problem in watchmaking: find the most considered solution, then execute it with a level of craft that leaves nothing to chance. His watches, as the brand itself articulates, are designed to speak to both the Heart and the Mind simultaneously, an aspiration that the work consistently fulfills.
Kevin O’Leary at the Atelier: A Meeting of Two Singular Minds
O’Leary’s visit to Le Solliat during Watches and Wonders Geneva was a private encounter between a collector and a maker, conducted in the environment where the work actually happens. Walking into the David Candaux atelier is to understand immediately that this is a place where things are built, and where the relationship between the craftsman and the object is visible in every surface.
O’Leary has spoken extensively and publicly about his approach to collecting, which prioritizes mechanical significance, storytelling, and rarity above brand recognition or resale value. His collection reflects those priorities. The watches he gravitates toward are watches with an argument to make, objects that reward close attention and repay knowledge with deeper appreciation. In that sense, his interest in David Candaux is not surprising. What Candaux makes is precisely the kind of watchmaking that rewards the engaged collector.
The Commission: A DC6 Titanium in Anodized Black and Red
The occasion for the visit was deeply personal. O’Leary came to Le Solliat to receive the unique DC6 Titanium that he had commissioned from Candaux, a timepiece created exclusively for him and conceived around the color that has become his visual signature across every medium in which he operates: red.
The DC6 Titanium in its standard form is already an architecturally ambitious watch. Launched in 2018 as the flagship of the Candaux collection, the DC6 features a hand-engraved Pointes du Risoux guilloché pattern across two titanium plates, dual sapphire domes that expose the movement from both sides of the case, and the brand’s signature 30-degree inclined flying tourbillon positioned at 9 o’clock beneath one sapphire crystal. At 3 o’clock, a semi-spherical subdial in silvered titanium evokes the geometry of an 18th-century navigational compass.
O’Leary’s version takes this foundation and executes it in a combination of anodized titanium black and red, with red flanges completing a look that is unmistakably his. The custom DC6 retains the full technical specification of the flagship model, including the inclined tourbillon and the avant-garde case architecture, but translates the entire visual identity into a color story that could belong to no one else. It is one of a kind in the most literal sense of that phrase.
Design Inspired by the Forest of the Risoux
The DC6 Titanium’s guilloché motif, the Pointes du Risoux pattern, derives from David Candaux’s aerial observation of the forest adjacent to his atelier, a view he has encountered while paragliding above the Vallée de Joux. The treetop geometry, seen from altitude, suggested a pattern that could be hand-engraved onto titanium plates to create a dial surface that is simultaneously tactile and visually complex. The result is a guilloché that reinterprets an 18th-century craft tradition in terms that are entirely of the 21st century and entirely personal to the maker.
For a collector like O’Leary, who values narrative and provenance in his acquisitions, this kind of biographical specificity matters enormously. The watch carries a story that begins in the landscape surrounding the atelier and reaches the wrist of the person wearing it, a continuous thread between place, maker, and owner.
Titanium as a Total Philosophy
One of the most technically distinctive aspects of the DC6 is its commitment to titanium as a unified material language across the entire watch. The case, the movement components, and the calibre architecture are all executed in titanium, a decision that reflects both an engineering preference and a design one. Titanium’s low density and high strength make it an ideal material for complex case construction, but working it to the standards that Candaux demands requires a level of expertise that very few independent ateliers possess.
For O’Leary’s bespoke version, the anodized finish in black and red demonstrates the material’s capacity for surface treatment without sacrificing structural integrity, an extension of Candaux’s technical vocabulary into color in a way that feels natural rather than applied.
Independent Watchmaking and the Collector Who Champions It
O’Leary has been a vocal advocate for independent watchmakers in public conversations about the industry, consistently directing attention toward ateliers that operate outside the major group structures and toward the kinds of mechanical ambition that characterize the best independent work. His commission from David Candaux takes that advocacy into a more personal register, a collaboration between a collector who knows precisely what he wants and a watchmaker who has the technical resources and creative vision to deliver it.
Why Independent Watches Matter to the Serious Collector
The case for independent watchmaking has never been stronger, and it rests on a simple but powerful argument: in an era when manufacture consolidation has concentrated movement production, case fabrication, and dial finishing within a small number of corporate groups, the independent atelier represents the only remaining context in which every decision about a watch flows from a single vision. David Candaux’s atelier in Le Solliat is exactly this kind of place. Every watch that leaves it is traceable, component by component, decision by decision, back to one mind and one pair of hands.
When Kevin O’Leary wears his red DC6 Titanium, he wears something that David Candaux made, specifically for him, in a workshop in the valley that has been producing the world’s finest watchmaking for three hundred years. That is a remarkable thing to put on your wrist.
Discover David Candaux
The David Candaux collection, including the DC6 Titanium, the DC6 Night Forest, the DC1 Titanium, and the newly introduced DC12 Maverik, is available to explore at davidcandaux.com. Private appointments with the atelier can be arranged directly through the brand. For collectors interested in bespoke commissions, the Kevin O’Leary collaboration is a demonstration of what becomes possible when a collector’s vision meets an independent watchmaker’s craft at the highest level.