Carole Forestier-Kasapi grew up in a family of watchmakers, so it was almost inevitable that she would be drawn to the bench. What wasn’t inevitable was just how far her imagination would take her. In the 1990s, she came to notice with a radical idea for a carrousel tourbillon, a concept that won her the Breguet Prize in 1997 and caught the eye of Ulysse Nardin, where her thinking helped inspire some of the brand’s most daring projects of that era, particularly the groundbreaking Freak.

The Ulysse Nardin Freak debuting at Baselworld in 2001, inspired by a prototype from Carole Forestier-Kasapi and brought to production by Dr. Ludwig Oechslin

Her reputation only grew when she moved to Cartier, where she spent more than a decade reshaping the maison’s watchmaking ambitions. As Head of Movement Creation there, she pushed Cartier beyond its decorative roots, spearheading pieces such as the Astro tourbillon and the futuristic ID One and ID Two concept watches. In 2012, she was named Best Watchmaker at the GPHG, followed in 2021 by the Gaïa Prize, cementing her place among the industry’s true innovators.

Since 2020, she has been at TAG Heuer as Movements Director, where her focus is on both reliability and imagination. Under her watch, the TH20-00 caliber has set new standards for robustness, while the Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph shows she hasn’t lost her appetite for spectacle.

TAG Heuer TH20-00 Caliber