It has been said of Stefan Hafner that he loves precious stones in the same way that a gourmet savours the pleasures of the table.

With almost hedonistic abandon and a hungry passion for beauty, this jeweller-watchmaker relishes the challenges of his 'table' in very personal collections that evoke a myriad of eclectic influences and pay tribute to the world's most stylish women.

Perhaps a Grecian armlet of the type Helen of Troy might have worn - the beaten precious metals neatly encircling a delicate wrist, but belying its purely aesthetic purpose is a small watch face, embedded in the clasp. It, like the precious metal and diamond detail surrounding it, is priceless and the only allusion to the functional is the fact that it keeps time, saving the piece entirely from indulgence.

Row upon row of cultured pearls creep elegantly up the wrist, held together by a frieze of glittering diamonds and coloured gems that surround a perfect pear-shaped watch face. Audacious, extravagant, opulent and always romatic. These descriptions and the phrase enfant terrible potentiate both the product and the designer's creative raison d'etre.

Swiss born but an Italophile who makes his home and work base in the nation he calls the 'country of creation', Hafner's passion for creative prowess exceeds far and away the stringent protocols bestowed on traditional Swiss watch design. His work is imaginative, rich and opulent, borne of a passion to give women who love haute couture and obvious personal styles demands innovative and unique timepieces.

The latest collection displays a striking Islamic aesthetic, a legacy of Hafner's strong affiliation with the decorative arts of the Muslim countries. However, he consistently presents a remarkable synthesis of some very eclectic influences: the flowing Baroque lines that characterise Italian style, the pure joy of design which marked art deco, the sensuous flow of Oriental jewellery and the melange of eclectic cultural influences that can be perhaps too flippantly labelled European Realism, make for a heady aesthetic formula. The rich placement of priceless gems and beaten metals, most particularly black gold which is a speciality of the atelier evoke, a romanticism and love of the aesthetic far in excess of mere function. Using the finest Swiss movements sourced from Geneva, an Etoile watch can naturally keep perfect time, rendering earthbound what would otherwise be priceless bracelets of astronomic embellishment. Utilitarianism could never be deemed to be its primary command.

"It is a little like a stew," says Hafner, "where everything is mixed together but with one notable and eternal component, the Swiss watch movement that symbolises tradition and security." The watches are small and discreet, almost like a functional frieze set in amongst the bracelets and settings which, like the product name, give off a supernova level of light.

For Hafner, time is important but the fashion in which it is expressed is always haute, and its greatest accompaniment is couture.

"Etoile', meaning a star, is something that denotes the very best, it is something truly wonderful, giving off light, the finest," says Hafner's young assistant Michel, "and these watches illustrate this. He wanted to do something really special, very exclusive and very beautiful."

But slavish devotion to fashion dictates is not on the Etoile styling agenda. Hafner's timepieces are primarily an artistic and emotional response to his years of globetrotting, his fascination with the legacies of the grand traditions of jewellery of the past and present, and his uncommon emphasis on customisation. " We never impose a style; we act in an entirely eclectic manner. We adapt ourselves to a demand; we seek to create what is missing," says Hafner. "We look for new forms adapted to the mentality of the people who commission a design from us.

Stefan Hafner derived the 'grammar of jewellery' with which he writes his unique and much admired design style from his thirty years of experience starting as a jeweller making pieces for a Swiss company based in Japan and expanding his reach making works for various companies all over Europe. Until he founded his own "little family company" a little over eight years ago. Hafner had neither made a watch, nor had he sold a piece of jewellery under his own name. At that time, a friend of Hafner's, Urs Beruggisser then working for simpatico 'watch-as-jewellery' company Delaneau, asked Hafner to make him a timepiece. Hafner, thriving on challenges, agreed, and today. Beruggisser coordinates distribution for Etoile from Switzerland, in addition to overseeing the jewellery facet of the business in Italy and the watch movements in Geneva.

Having already established a ready network of clients in the Arabic states - many of whom had already professed an interest in knowing the man behind the company names - Hafner proceeded to create in his first collection timepieces that were immediately unique, dazzling and in their construction and workmanship and remarkably innovative as a total effect.

"He thrives on challenges and, 'If I make watches. I will make the best , most beautiful watches.' He surprises himself and he creates in extremes," says Michel of the employer he clearly admires. "He is married with children but I don't think that he ever sees his family - he is always travelling. He is crazy but he has a nice craziness!

"He loves his job: he is crazy for it and I have never seen a man so committed. Until the middle of this year he wanted to do everything himself to be totally involved in everything himself.

"He makes such nice things - they are almost too nice and every year he floods his market with yet another collection of magnificent pieces. Sometimes it overwhelms his clients! They are almost too original, too exclusive to make a collection. He has so many ideas for his clients and we are so exclusive and so expensive that we touch only a very small minority of people. One of the design changes that he has done since that first collection is to evoke the European style, so that it is more subtle than the Arabic style which is larger and even more ornate. The bands are also simpler

For a man of such an unbridled and passionate creativity, and given that the design of a watch is traditionally limited by its function, the question is begged as to why he did not pursue the production of jewellery under his own name rather than the professional predeliction for watches. The answer is two-fold.

"For thirty years Stefan wasn't really known outside the profession," says Michel. "It was not possible to name jewellery 'Etoile' because they said that jewellery called 'Etoile' is too close to the product, a watch is different. The connection is slightly more esoteric. Secondly, Etoile gives the ability to buy a watch and then you can have rings, bracelets, brooches which we also make.

That is why we call the product 'Etoile by Stefan Hafner' so that there is a name identified with the product."

Hafner affirms the need to adopt a new challenge and to create something in addition to his established skill in jewellery design. In doing so, he drifted more towards the design sensibility of southern Europe and further away from his native land and its national pride and joy - the traditional Swiss watch.

"The idea was that I always wanted to make something myself. Many years ago when I was working for a Swiss company in Japan, I learned a basic education of how the Japanese work and we had a lot of requests from our customers for certain things that the Swiss were very clumsy in following up, Both in watches and jewellery. If the client wanted some changes, some customisation, we were always told that it could not be done or that it would take a year for alternations to come through.

"I thought that it was a great pity and I noticed that people in the industry at that time had no idea about high fashion in the industry. I would go to their offices and they would have a fashion magazine on the table that was perhaps two years old. It could not possibly work! The Swiss at that time, you see, were still sitting on their laurels as regards to Swiss Watchmaking finesse - they were manifesting the typical old-fashioned traditional attitude that the client must buy only what we want to sell them! It was very inflexible. They were very dogmatic which is something that I feel you cannot profess in design.

"From school, I had always been interested in the decorative arts, and then I thought to myself, why don't we start to really look at the fashion magazines and take into account all the accessories; everything that the woman was wearing, their wishes, their lifestyle and to build up something that is a parallelism to high fashion."

Having decided on this course of creative action. Stefan returned to Europe but not to Switzerland.

"I wanted to go to a place of real culture in Europe and Italy offered the most. Before I went to Japan I had studied in Florence for six months. My mother is of Italian origin you see, so I had close ties with Italy already, and from childhood I had been directed more to the south of Europe although I was attracted to the West. France at the time I was looking to relocate, was also a little bit staid, less exuberant in all types of fashion expression - Italians were dictating the law then in 1967. It was a natural progression for one to go Italy."

The inherent capabilities of Italian artisans today as in the past, does not detract from the excellence of the French according to Stefan. He is as enamoured of the French mode de vie and instinctive grasp of design, particularly in fashion as is most of the modern world. However, he feels that greater situations beyond the popular control of these industries have taken somewhat of a toll.

"The French when they go and do something in high fashion, they are leaders, very strong. I have a very great respect for the French but I think that the reason that the French have lost out to the Italians to some degree in the past 10 years is because of the socio-political aspect. In France, they have very strong socialism: they have a terrible tax system. There is probably no other country in Europe who has such a high rate of suicide a year because of tax problems," says Stefan. "It is like when it is raining, the flowers don't open up the way that they do when there is sunshine. In France, there was not very much sunshine to encourage people to go to the extents that the Italian situation allowed us to do.

Italy, he hastens to add, is not immune from such unavoidable circumstance; however, he feels that there is a somewhat more laissez-faire attitude that fosters initiative. It is at times blackly comical, but always has its roots in a sort of professional hedonism that is conducive to the creation of a passionate product. They have a healthy disregard for stress-inducing situations, motivated rather by a creative tradition that stems back hundreds of years. And when it comes to the commitment and dedication of his workers. Hafner is at once admiring and proud.

"Italy is structured differently," he says. "I was just reading an analysis which addressed the issue of the Eastern bloc opening to the capitalist system and this commentator was explaining the differences between American, Italian, French, Japanese capitalist approaches. They are all so diverse, so different. And it will be interesting to see, which system the Eastern countries opt for. The Japanese system is almost like communism because the workers there belong to a company, they are like soldiers and in South-East Asia, this is the winning system. It does not allow individuality or initiative, the companies control the society.

"Whereas in Italy, if you want the people to move left, then you tell them on television everyday to go right. You see, Italian capitalism is built all around feudalistic families. You know, when this crazy Garibaldi came and united Italy, it was foolish to put them all under one hat. The Italians do what gives them pleasure, they are motivated by quality of life as well as making money. My staff amaze me: they all will work 80 hours a week in summer to have a piece ready - they are so dedicated to their craft. I am surrounded by people who are as passionate as I am".

In this atmosphere, Stefan Hafner established Etoile with a team of six goldsmiths and two designers, and they began to make their special brand of jewellery. "The style was always inspired by romantic neo-classicism, no modern styles, no abstract designs. "says Stefan adamantly. "Then we began to make sets - rings, matching necklaces, brooches, hair-clips, pins and we have been doing that ever since. But in going to places in Europe and gradually to the Middle East I went of course, to all the jewellery shops who stocked watches and when I would go these departments, from a distance, they would all look the same irrespective of the name.

"That instilled in me the desire to create a product that would take into account the fact that in high fashion they sell dresses for thousands of dollars but the trend in watches was for sporty elegant designs which absolutely did not watch with the very fashionable clothing. I won't mention names but from the top end of the market right down to the bottom, all the watches were sporty in style. This sells, and there is of course a market, but there are occasions when the ladies do not just want to show how ostensibly rich they are, but the more money a woman makes, in general, she wants to be associated with art and to prove to her friends that she has good taste.

Isolating the need for a decorative piece that could tell the time, Hafner harnessed the fashion sensibility of the period which luxuriated in expensive fabrics and rich materials. Etoile then began the process of creating "the haute couture of watches" to complement textiles that would soon become artforms and a consumer - albeit, not a large percentage of the total market - who was confident enough to relegate the sporty watch to the casual segment of the wardrobe and adorn her wrist with a definitive statement.

"That market niche, despite being small, was in fact very encouraging," says Stefan. "And many times, I have heard people say, 'at last, someone has come up with a watch that is geared to haute couture fashion.' What high fashion magazines show is how far the study of textiles has gone. It is an artform, very sophisticated, so I think that it was an excellent move to come into this area with a watch that has a couturier's approach and which takes into account all these designs concepts in high fashion.

This 'small' client base has grown to encompass, literally the four corners of the earth: from Europe to the Americas, South East Asia. Australia - "we sell a very satisfying amount of watches in your country." he says with a keen understatement and beyond Etoile enjoys the continued patronage of Stefan's beloved Middle East and the stylistic influence is a source of neverending inspiration for him: "Actually, when one talks about Etoile in the Middle East, the ladies get very enthusiastic about it! As for the mens watches, well this is so far an area where we feel a little less strong because we have dedicated most of our time to the women.

"The Middle East is a most interesting area for the decorative arts given that there were so many restrictions on design because of the Muslim doctrines. So the resulting aesthetic is fascinating in the mosaics, the decorations they created in their holy places, even their carpets - in small centimetre sections there is such movement and flow. Their study of forms, happily marrying with each other and gearing with each other is unparalleled," he enthuses.

Even the Swiss have come to the party from both the professional and consumer spheres. Not surprisingly, Hafner is especially pleased to spot an Etoile watch on the arm of a Swiss lady although he doubts she purchased it in her own country. A cultural observer might find that a bracelet-watch of the intricacy and flamboyance of an Etoile would be a little too forthright for the Swiss, and German sense of teutonic reserve, but when they are abroad on the snowfields of Gstaad or holidaying in the sun, the attraction of a shining star has proven too difficult to ignore.

"The Swiss are really very fashion conscious: the travel overseas constantly, to London, to the States and it surprised us as well, the amount of Swiss customers that we have in addition to the Germans. They often have apartments in Monte Carlo and like the Swiss do not usually like to buy from their own country - they do not like to show too much ostentation at home. when they are abroad, particularly in the Mediterranean where the mood is much more relaxed, they buy things that they would not otherwise buy in their countries.

At the Basel Fair when I showed a collection, three of the top names from the Swiss industry, came up to our booth and congratulated us saying that if more of the Swiss industry had the guts to come up with something like what we were doing, bringing so much fresh blood to the industry, it would be fantastic.

And you know that one of the most gratifying things to have happen to our company is that after such a short time, Etoile is now sold in Place Vendome, in Paris. For us, it was like having graduated with a university degree!. To the French, an Italian designed product sold under it's own name without using one of theirs, it is like receiving a diploma!".

The added beauty of owning an Etoile watch comes from the clients own input through mandate of design style that emphasis the individuality of the client and ergo, the company. Normally a client is shown between 30-40 previous models so that a basis of preferences may be established. She is then supplied with a book which catalogues the design history of Etoile, and combined with her own stylistic input, a new star is born.

"We want the customer to be involved in creating their watches," says Stefan of this most individual approach to watchmaking. "We can then meld the influences with the customers own desires and tastes. In this way we personalise the watch. The lady then feels that she not only had a say in the choice of her fashion but in the choice of her watch.

Such free rein in terms of customer input naturally yields some inordinate requests. But, this only spurs the Etoile team - now one hundred strong - to rise to the occasion. They are also able to tap into a universal fashion preference via this unique and one imagines costly, barometer of style. The nature of the customer also pushes gift-giving into a most rarefied stratosphere, as Stefan explains.

"These customers need to give gifts - but what does a sultan, an emir or a sheik give someone as a present? He wants to give someone as a present? He wants to give something that no one has and when they receive it, it is unique. They cannot give normal watches for this reason. In fact, that is one of the reasons that we make so many models because sometimes within one family, they have a lot of daughters, granddaughters, aunts and relations and they all want a different one: it can never be the same.

"When you meet this type of person, you observe the ultimate in emotional buying, you can see that they are people who do not have to watch the money side of a purchase - they buy purely for the love and from instinct. We had one lady who got so carried away she bought 64 pieces at once! You have all kinds of different characters. We had one lady in the Middle East whose watches we had to make out of mink, leopard and sable because she could not wear a fur coat as such. They all matched her clothes. It showed people she had style, she was creative and she had something that no one else had, She was unique.

What is in store for this small company whose foremost delight is its specialised creativity, is comparatively modest. No expansionist plans for world-wide Etoile domination, no corporate inroads into lucrative American retailing and no massive distributorships transforming stars into constellations. Just another stunning new line to be shown at Basel, the establishment of a firm presence in the Japanese marketplace with a new promotion in Tokyo and a continued courtship of Etoile's beloved markets from Sydney to Paris.

"You know, a business like ours must have commercial sense of course, but continuing to make money is important insofar as you can put into reality the new ideas and new creativity that motivate you," says Hafner of his guiding light.

"There are people who sum up everything in terms of millions, but there are others like me who look at collections and get goose pimples like I do and maybe we are the happiest - the ones for whom the word work does not exist, but for whom the words, passion, hobby, enthusiasm, emotion, are important. but as a businessman said to me the other day: 'Stefan you and I will never make money because we are too much in love with what we are doing. But then again, that is why we do it."