For a lot of watch enthusiasts, Maurice Lacroix enters the conversation through one watch: the AIKON.

Fair enough. The bold bezel, integrated-bracelet look, and six distinctive arms around the case have given Maurice Lacroix one of the easiest designs to recognize in its corner of modern Swiss watchmaking. The AIKON has also become the brand’s bestseller.

Then you start looking around.

There are skeletonized movements. Triple retrograde displays. Strange mechanical ways of showing time. A classical collection named for the company’s founding year. A new generation of AIKON watches using ceramic, carbon, and upgraded movements. Even solar-powered PONTOS sports watches have entered the mix.

Suddenly Maurice Lacroix becomes a much bigger story.

Who Is Maurice Lacroix?

Maurice Lacroix began producing watches in 1975 in Switzerland’s Jura region. Its manufacturing operation is based in Saignelégier, an area with deep ties to Swiss watchmaking.

Fifty years is relatively young in Swiss-watch terms, and that has shaped the personality of the company. Maurice Lacroix has had room to build its identity through recognizable design, technical experimentation, and a willingness to play with how mechanical watches display information.

That experimentation became especially visible through the MASTERPIECE collection and the brand’s work with manufacture movements and mechanisms. Maurice Lacroix says it has produced numerous manufacture movements and in-house mechanisms over its history, including pieces such as the Square Wheel and later retrograde watches.

There is an important distinction here for collectors. Maurice Lacroix uses different movement strategies across its catalog. Some watches feature manufacture calibres or proprietary mechanisms, while others use movements developed with outside specialists or established Swiss bases.

That makes the individual watch matter.

And that nuance makes the brand more interesting.

How the AIKON Became the Face of Maurice Lacroix

The AIKON arrived in 2016, though its design story starts earlier.

During the 1990s, Maurice Lacroix enjoyed considerable success with a watch called the Calypso. After the Calypso was discontinued in 2003, the company eventually returned to its archives and reworked that visual language for a contemporary audience. The result was AIKON.

The connection is easiest to see around the bezel. Those six arms became an identifying feature and gave the new collection a design code Maurice Lacroix could build upon.

And build it did.

AIKON has expanded far beyond the original quartz releases into automatic models, skeletons, different case sizes, unusual materials, limited editions, and sportier variations. Maurice Lacroix now describes it as its bestselling watch.

That matters because plenty of Swiss brands have recognizable names. Fewer have a modern watch you can identify from across the room.

AIKON gave Maurice Lacroix that.

The AIKON Automatic 39mm is perhaps the easiest way to understand the formula: contemporary proportions, a strong bracelet-led design, Swiss automatic mechanics, and enough visual personality to feel distinctly Maurice Lacroix.

From there, things get considerably weirder. In the best way.

Maurice Lacroix Has a Thing for Retrogrades

Spend enough time with Maurice Lacroix and one complication keeps appearing: the retrograde display.

A retrograde hand travels across part of a scale and, when it reaches the end, snaps back to its starting position rather than continuing in a full circle. It adds movement and visual drama to information that could otherwise sit quietly in a conventional window or subdial.

Maurice Lacroix has worked with retrograde indications for more than 25 years. The brand introduced its Calendar Retrograde in 1999, followed by the Double Retrograde in 2002, and the complication has continued through later MASTERPIECE models.

The current MASTERPIECE Triple Retrograde pushes the idea hard. Its ML291 calibre displays a retrograde calendar alongside the weekday, a second 24-hour time zone, small seconds, hours, and minutes. The 43mm watch essentially turns the dial into a demonstration of how differently mechanical information can be arranged.

This is where Maurice Lacroix gains another personality.

AIKON is immediate. MASTERPIECE rewards staring.

The Collections That Explain Maurice Lacroix Best

The catalog makes more sense once you stop treating Maurice Lacroix as one type of watchmaker.

AIKON is the modern signature. It carries the bold, urban sports-watch identity and gives the brand its most recognizable design.

MASTERPIECE is where the mechanical experimentation lives. Retrogrades, skeletonization, unusual displays, and movements designed to give you something to actually look at.

1975 shifts the mood toward cleaner, more classical watches. The name references the brand’s founding year, and the collection gives Maurice Lacroix a calmer visual counterpoint to AIKON. Current versions range from compact quartz pieces to far more technically ambitious mechanical watches.

PONTOS handles the sportier side of the catalog. In 2026, Maurice Lacroix expanded it with the PONTOS S Solar, bringing Swiss solar-quartz movements and 200 meters of water resistance into the lineup.

Then there is AIKONIC, a newer extension of the AIKON idea that pushes the familiar design into more technical territory with upgraded materials and movement specifications.

Taken together, these collections show a company that seems happiest when it has room to experiment.

The 1975 Collection Is Where Old and New Maurice Lacroix Meet

One of the more interesting recent developments came when Maurice Lacroix introduced the 1975 collection around its 50th anniversary.

The standard models lean classical. Cleaner dials. Familiar round cases. A more restrained personality than the architectural AIKON.

Then Maurice Lacroix dropped the 1975 Master Grand Date Retrograde in January 2026.

There goes the restraint.

The 42mm watch pairs a large date display with a retrograde weekday indication and a skeletonized dial. Maurice Lacroix identifies its ML302 as its 26th Masterpiece calibre and uses an in-house module to handle the complications.

It is a great snapshot of what this brand does well. The watch begins with a fairly traditional idea, then mechanics start showing through the dial, a blue hand jumps back across its scale every week, and the whole thing develops considerably more personality.

That tension between Swiss tradition and visual experimentation has become one of Maurice Lacroix’s strongest signatures.

Maurice Lacroix Is Still Changing

The last couple of years have been unusually useful for understanding where the brand wants to go.

The 1975 family created a new classical lane. The Master Grand Date Retrograde brought the company’s complication history into it. AIKON continues to evolve rather than sitting still as the established bestseller.

And the PONTOS S Solar, released in June 2026, takes the company in another direction entirely. Maurice Lacroix uses Swiss Ronda solar-quartz calibres in the range, with the three-hand model offering up to eight months of autonomy at full charge and 200 meters of water resistance. The company says the system can operate for more than 10 years without a battery replacement.

Mechanical watch enthusiasts can get protective about tradition. Maurice Lacroix seems comfortable moving between traditions.

That feels appropriate for a company whose identity was built in decades rather than centuries.

Who Is Maurice Lacroix For?

Maurice Lacroix makes the most sense for collectors who enjoy recognizable design and visible mechanics.

Someone drawn to integrated-bracelet sports watches will probably meet the brand through AIKON. A collector who likes seeing a movement turned into part of the dial has MASTERPIECE and the skeleton models to explore. Retrograde fans have an unusually deep rabbit hole waiting for them.

There is also a surprisingly broad range of entry points. As of August 2026, Maurice Lacroix’s official U.S. catalog stretches from 1975 quartz models around $950 into MASTERPIECE pieces approaching or reaching $10,000, depending on the reference.

That range makes the brand difficult to reduce to one simple label.

Which might be the point.

The AIKON Gets Your Attention. The Rest Explains the Brand.

Maurice Lacroix has managed to do something useful with its relatively young history.

It found a recognizable modern design in AIKON. It kept experimenting with mechanical displays through MASTERPIECE. It made retrogrades part of its vocabulary. And lately, collections such as 1975 and PONTOS S Solar have widened the idea of what a Maurice Lacroix watch can look like.

The AIKON will probably remain the model most people recognize first.

Spend a little longer with the brand, though, and the jumping retrograde hands, skeletonized displays, odd mechanical ideas, and willingness to move between automatic, quartz, and solar watches start telling the better story.

Maurice Lacroix seems to enjoy figuring out new ways to make people look at their wrists. For a watch company, that is a pretty good obsession to have.

Did Maurice Lacroix surprise you, or was this brand already on your radar? Tell us in the comments.