Daniel Roth (born 1945) trained at the Technical School of Nice and spent formative years in the 1960s at Audemars Piguet and Jaeger-LeCoultre restoring complicated movements. In 1974 he joined Breguet, then in a protracted post-war slump, and helped lead the revival of the tourbillon as a commercial wristwatch complication. Roth's tourbillons at Breguet in the 1970s and 1980s were among the first serial wristwatch tourbillons since the 1940s and reinstated the complication at the core of Breguet's identity. He left in 1988 to found his own eponymous brand.
The original Daniel Roth brand launched with a distinctive double-oval case, an hourglass-shaped profile Roth designed while at Breguet but reserved for his own name. Early references included a tourbillon, a perpetual calendar, and a chronograph, all hand-finished to haute-horlogerie standard at a small atelier in Le Sentier. The brand attracted serious collector attention through the 1990s but remained commercially small. Roth sold the brand to Bulgari in 2000; it was subsumed into the Bulgari portfolio as "Bvlgari Daniel Roth," and the standalone brand faded by the late 2000s.
In April 2023, LVMH and Bulgari relaunched Daniel Roth as a standalone brand. The launch reference was the Tourbillon Souscription, a 20-piece limited edition in yellow gold at CHF 135,000, faithfully reproducing the 1988 double-oval case and Daniel Roth's own 1988 signature on the dial. The movement is the hand-wound Cal. DR001 manual tourbillon produced at Bvlgari's haute-horlogerie manufacture in Le Sentier. The reissue sold out instantly to collectors who had tracked the Daniel Roth name since the 1990s.
Daniel Roth himself lives in France and is not directly involved in the new brand's operations, though his name, signature, and design language define the product. Subsequent references have followed: the Tourbillon Extra Plat (2024, white gold), the Perpetual Calendar (2024), and announced grand-complication pieces for 2025-2026. Production is deliberately minimal; LVMH positions Daniel Roth as Bvlgari's haute-horlogerie specialist label, distinct from the Bvlgari-branded mainstream collection. Retail prices run from CHF 135,000 (Tourbillon Souscription) to CHF 300,000+ (complicated references); secondary-market premiums for the 2023 Souscription are already multiples of retail.
