Worn & Wound
History, “Sprezzatura,” and Finding Balance: A Conversation with Parmigiani Fleurier CEO Guido Terreni
Writing about watches is, often, an exercise in confirming and combatting preconceived ideas. Snap judgments are easy to form without thinking them through, and early opinions can be hard to shake, so the biggest challenges for anyone in this industry are parsing one’s own opinions, and learning how to look past them to evaluate the watches that come across our desks fairly. Most watches only require confronting this challenge in a cursory sense, but the best watches force you to face it head-on. Like many watches in the latter category, the new Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF Sport Chronograph required me to do some serious thinking. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to sit down with Guido Terreni, the CEO of Parmigiani Fleurier, to talk about the brand, their watches, and why I can’t get Parmigiani Fleurier off my mind. Guido Terreni, Parmigiani Fleurier CEO Parmigiani Fleurier has spent much of the last few years absolutely knocking the proverbial ball out of the park. Since Terreni’s hiring in 2021, the brand’s been on a heater, releasing hit after hit, and building a new identity almost from scratch, rebuilding and simplifying the collection to create a new identity for the nearly 30-year-old brand. “When I joined the company, I understood that the brand needed direction and style, and what was in the pipeline was not building the brand as I thought it should. So I blocked everything and we started working from scratch on a white piece of paper - not perfectl...
