Beyond this “Jim Carrey look” escaped without a mask from a flea market, Joël Laplace alias @jojolamontre on Insta, has been sharing for more than 15 years his sinful passion for an universe of vintage watches and unexpected watchmaking items. For sale…
By Joël A. Grandjean, JSH® Magazine & Swiss Watch Passport’s editor in chief & publisher
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To come across him at the corner of a Neuchâtel square, whether or not accompanied by a passionate collector, is to take the risk of affording oneself a small temporal gift. To fall for either an affordable watch freshly repaired and overhauled by a friend watchmaker, mounted on a matching and coherent bracelet, or for an accessory linked to a forgotten or very famous brand.
Vintage timepieces and old-fashioned accessories
There are his unequalled “new old stock“, these never-worn models that look older than your age without a single wrinkle of use, there are his favourites for a galaxy of affordable watches that are deliciously tarnished by time. Joël Laplace, by drawing from an everlasting teenage backpack, often provokes wonder. For he takes out, to show it off and to comment on it, a find from various watchmaking environments: an advertising object, a marketing tool, a gift restricted to good customers… All of them more or less discreetly display the brand that produced them, in order to promote its image or its new products.
In the Media
Above all, it is on his Instagram profile that deals are initiated and concluded. By appointment only. The images are from Loïc Herin, a friend who is a professional photographer. As for his media exposure, it has continued to grow since Logan Baker and Janosch Abel devoted a laudatory, complete and moving portrait of him for Hodinkee. Especially since just by doing a “google” search we occasionally come upon one of his columns on the Watchonista website (where he was a regular contributor), on Europa Star or even in the special watchmaking pages of the daily newspaper Le Temps.