GENEVA (AFP) ― Napoleon’s admirers will be able to carry his DNA on their wrists after a Swiss company announced Tuesday its plans to sell watches containing a fragment of the emperor’s hair.
Half-millimeter slices of his locks will be placed inside a limited series of some 500 watches that are to bear the likeness of Napoleon, said Viviane de Witt, CEO of De Witt watchmakers, told AFP.
They will sell for the price of around $10,000.
The first surgery-like operation to slice up the hair happened Tuesday in the presence of a bailiff at the De Witt factory in Geneva.
“Napoleon was already quite idolized while he was alive, when he got his hair cut people picked it up and kept it,” De Witt said.
In this case the hair was part of a 1,000-piece trove of Napoleon memorabilia belonging to the royal family of Monaco, which fetched jaw dropping prices during an auction in mid-November near Paris.
One of the most incredible sale prices was the $2.4 million a South Korean chicken mogul paid for a hat worn by Napoleon.
De Witt spent a whopping $36,900 for items containing Napoleon’s hair at the sale, which had been expected to go for up to $8,700.
Viviane de Witt’s husband, the company founder, is a direct descendant of Jerome Napoleon, the youngest brother of the early 19th-century French emperor.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
