It’s no surprise that Christophe Hoppe developed a deep fascination for the intricate art of watchmaking. Christophe grew up on the outskirts of Basel, a Swiss town on the French border, which annually hosts the world’s most prestigious watch fair.

Immigrating to Australia as an adult to be with his partner, Christophe also discovered a love for his adopted home country. In particular, the laidback lifestyle of Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Working for an apparel company as a Chief Financial Officer at the time, Christophe aspired to design his own timepieces and began sketching what he believed a truly Australian watch should look like.

“It needs to be water-resistant, so you can wear it for a surf or a swim. But with a quick change from a silicon band to something a bit dressier, it’s now a watch you can wear in the boardroom or out to dinner,” says Christophe.

Christophe also wanted every watch to reflect the rugged landscape surrounding him. The brand name he chose, Bausele, sounds Euro-exotic but is actually a portmanteau of ‘Beyond Australian Elements’. It references the brand’s most unique feature – a tiny quantity of Australian beach sand or outback red dirt carefully embedded in the hollow crown of each timepiece.

In 2011, Christophe began selling his first collection of watches online, at Sydney markets and in duty free shops. Over the decade, the brand has since evolved with its headquarters and showroom located at The Rocks in Sydney’s CBD, where Christophe works and continues to refine Bausele’s design aesthetic.

The appeal of Christophe’s classic timepieces have led to impressive collaborations with the Sydney Opera House and the Royal Australian Air Force. In his design for the Sydney Opera House, Christophe integrated pieces of ground-up roof tile in the hollow crown from the Opera House’s famous sails into his design. Meanwhile, for the centenary celebrations of the Royal Australian Air Force, he incorporated decommissioned materials from the first RAAF FA-18 Hornet fighter jet to have assembled into the Bausele watches.

Ever the innovator, Christophe even worked with scientists at Flinders University in South Australia to develop a completely new material, dubbed Bauselite, for his high-end Terra Australis model, and also launched Australia’s first hybrid smartwatch.

Today Bausele’s flagship model, the Oceanmoon IV, wouldn’t look out of place alongside the aspirational Swiss luxury watch brands that the young Swiss-French might once have once coveted. It is, in fact, Swiss-made – a tag that can only be applied when 60% of the watch’s value, including the movement, is verifiably Swiss. Yet it is also identifiably a Bausele original, projecting a strong brand identity that is testament to a decade of continuous development.

Following the success of the RAAF collaboration, Christophe’s colleague and CEO of Bausele, Arron Coote, wanted to find a way to support US military veterans who had returned from war battling depression or PTSD, with many unemployed and living on the streets.

The result? The recent release of the Bausele MIL-SPEC field watch (officially designated as Ref. 31101). This watch marks the first time Christophe has collaboratively worked on a watch design, sitting down with a group of 11 military veterans and watch specialists to create a collection inspired by the distinctive design of World War II-era military watches.

In this collection, the Bausele trademark hollow crown substitutes Australian elements for American soil sourced from the US Army’s own military bases, while also needing to meet the US Army’s own stringent specifications. Ten per cent of sales from this collection are donated to US veterans’ associations.

“They pushed me with every decision on the design, making sure the watch is truly a tool that could be use by military personnel,” says Christophe.

“I’m not going to lie, this was the most challenging thing we have ever done,” says Christophe. “But it is also the thing I am most proud we have done. We literally went ‘Beyond Australian Elements’ to create not just a beautiful watch or collection, but something that is going to make a tangible difference in the lives of real people in real need.”

By Steve Colquhoun