Five decades of beautiful defiance

Early 1970s

THE FOUNDING ACT

Severin Wunderman: The man who did not ask permission

Severin Wunderman arrived in watchmaking with no capital, no connections, and no intention of waiting for either. He was working as a salesman when he talked his way into a manufacturing deal with Aldo Gucci. His employer said the order was too large to fill. Severin placed it himself, secured an advance from Aldo to fund production, and built a company around a handshake and an instinct that the entire industry would spend the next three decades trying to understand.

That was the founding act. Everything that followed carried the same charge: a refusal to be told what could and could not be done, paired with the taste to do it beautifully. It reshaped an entire industry.

Michael grew up watching all of it from the inside.

1975

DESIGN ORIGINS

A point of view, worn on the wrist

While running Severin Montres, the company he founded to manufacture Gucci Timepieces, Severin found time to develop a collection entirely his own. An Art Deco line presented at the New York trade show in 1975, the year Michael was born. It was a declaration. Severin was a designer with a point of view, and the watches would prove the conviction that a watch must have something to say defined everything that followed.

1980s

BREAKOUT DECADE

What the industry said was impossible

The 1980s belonged to Severin. Gucci Timepieces, designed and manufactured entirely by Severin Montres, grew into the most visible fashion watch brand in the world. Close to one million units a year across 6,000 retail doors. Full campaigns in the American Express catalog. Global showcase space dominated by a single creative vision.

Then he did the thing everyone remembers.

Severin wanted to set diamonds into stainless steel. The Swiss master setters told him it could not be done. The metal was too hard, tolerances were wrong and tradition did not allow for it. Severin went to the finest workshops in Switzerland and sat with them until they found a way. He had invented an entire category overnight; every major watchmaker in the world followed.

1985–1987

GLOBAL REACH

A genuine global watch company, built in under a decade

With Gucci Timepieces at the height of its commercial power, Severin opened a large distribution headquarters in Irvine, California and established manufacturing operations in Lengnau, Switzerland at the heart of the watchmaking world. He now had direct control over design, quality, and volume at both ends of the business.

Michael, growing up in the Irvine office after school, was absorbing every part of it.

Mid 1990s

CULTURAL MOMENT

The Gucci G Watch becomes the icon of a generation

Severin's most celebrated design for Gucci, a square-cased watch shaped around the brand's signature G, became the defining timepiece of the mid-1990s. It appeared on the wrist of Anna Kournikova at Wimbledon. It covered the back pages of London newspapers. The average selling price quadrupled.

Michael, by then serving as Marketing Director, directed the campaign that introduced it to the world, shooting the now-iconic product images in Paris with photographer Guido Mocafico. Father and son at full creative velocity.

1996

FIRST SOLO

Michael's first solo creative and commercial project: a limited edition as an event

At 20, Michael was running the Gucci Timepieces UK office and riding the wave of the G Watch craze. He conceived the G300: a solid gold limited edition restricted to the top 300 retail accounts in the world, delivered personally by Michael as he travelled from Tokyo to New York with the collection handcuffed to his wrist.

1996

FULL CIRCLE

Severin closes 25 years on his own terms

After more than two decades of collaboration, Severin and Gucci parted ways, each having shaped the other in ways the industry still feels. Severin negotiated a graceful exit entirely in keeping with the scale of what he had built: a settlement that honored 25 years of creative and commercial partnership, the contract extended through the end of 1996 to close the chapter properly. One million watches a year, a category invented and an industry permanently altered. Severin was already thinking about what came next.

2000

CORUM

Severin acquires Corum and launches the Bubble

Severin purchased Corum, a Swiss manufacture founded in 1955 with a rich heritage of avant-garde design, and launched the Bubble: a 45mm watch with a domed crystal 8.8mm thick, inspired by a vintage deep-sea timepiece that descended to the floor of the Mariana Trench in 1960. The industry had never seen anything like it. Bold, sculptural, and completely original, the Corum Bubble heralded the oversized watch trend a full decade before it peaked and signalled that Severin's best creative work was still ahead of him. Michael relocated to Neuchâtel to help build what came next.

2000–2008

WILD CRAFT

80+ Corum Bubble limited editions, each one a collector's object

The Corum Bubble became a canvas unlike anything in modern watchmaking. Over eight years, more than 80 limited editions: the Jolly Roger, the Lucifer, the Baron Samedi, the Casino, the Dive Bomber, and dozens more. Each arrived with bespoke packaging conceived by Michael as an extension of the watch: skull-embossed boxes lined in red, military-issue aluminum cases, voodoo doll accessories, hand-stamped certificates signed by Severin. The watch and the unboxing were a single experience. These pieces are still collected and exhibited today.

2003–2007

OPEN WATER

Corum on the water, from the Admiral's Cup to the America's Cup

Corum revived the Admiral's Cup offshore regatta in 2003, the unofficial world championship of ocean racing, drawing national crews from across the globe. The king of Spain sailed among the competitors. Four years later, Corum became a sponsor of the America's Cup, partnering with the Swedish Victory Challenge team. The Admiral's Cup watch collection, first introduced by Corum in 1960, had always carried the spirit of the sea.

Today

HOUSE OF WUNDER

Carrying the name forward

House of Wunder is Michael's own venture, carrying the family name forward under his creative direction. The same conviction that a watch must earn its place through originality, craft, and story. The same refusal to follow where others are already going.

Severin proved that a watch can change culture. That you can set diamonds where the industry says diamonds cannot go. That you can build a skull into a case and make the world want it.

House of Wunder exists for a new generation who understand that intensity and sophistication have always been the same force.