VIDEO: Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde Tribute
Two hundred and eighty years is pretty big as far as milestones go. So, given that Jaquet Droz is marking the big two-eight-o this year, you’d expect them to have a few tricks up their sleeve … and you wouldn’t be disappointed. They’ve released this special version of their signature watch — the Grande Seconde Tribute, a limited edition of 88 pieces cased, for the first time, in yellow gold. The original precious metal is perfectly paired with the warm ivory tones of the Grand Feu dial, printed with the characteristic dual dials — including the oversized seconds hand that gives the watch its name. It’s a design that is quite timeless, yet not old-fashioned, due in no small part to the fact that Jaquet Droz has executed the whole affair with restraint and taste. I particularly liked that the individual number of the watch (5 in this case) is printed on the dial. Classy stuff. Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde Tribute Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde Tribute, in yellow gold, $28,650.
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Gender-fluid. If you were born yesterday or became acquainted with pop culture only last year, you could be forgiven for thinking – based on the excitable talk among style-and-social commentators – that it’s a newly minted concept. Not so. The 1970s: boys wearing their hair longer than girls; 1966: Yves Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking … and so on, back through time. And watches: Cartier’s Tank, Rolex’s Datejust and Day-Date – those designs were always androgynous. And so to a watch that easily makes my Top 10 for the year: Chanel’s Boy.Friend Squelette or Skeleton if you prefer. Intentionally gender-neutral, it’s pitched as a women’s watch but it’s a world away from girly. And it’s equally far from butch: its Y chromosome is expressed as a very Parisian and urbane type of masculine elegance. The lines of the octagonal case – more accurately, a rectangle with its corners clipped off – is derived from Chanel’s first watch, the Premiere, but in Boy.Friend mode (which first appeared in 2015) the lines look tauter and sleeker. That’s largely thanks to its stepped bezel and svelte dimensions – the Squelette comes in at a shade under eight-and-a-half millimetres thick. Held inside that frame is a…
Few watches can rival Cartier’s Santos in terms of on-the-wrist recognition and sheer weight of history. The design debuted in 1904 and has remained fundamentally unchanged in form since. But while the new Santos might look familiar, quite a lot has changed. Small changes have been made to the design and ergonomics of the case, resulting in a watch that looks and wears better on the wrist. Bigger changes have been made to the inside, with an in-house movement upgrade and, most excitingly of all, a new QuickSwitch strap change system that allows you to swap your strap quickly and painlessly. This is something I’d be really excited to see rolled out more widely across the Cartier collection. On a related note, there’s a similar functionality for the bracelet, allowing you to add and remove links without tools. These changes on their own are all fairly incremental, but package them up together, on a design as strong as this, and the Santos suddenly becomes a very compelling proposition.
I’m eternally fascinated by the drivers of a watch purchase. The behaviours and the catalyst/s that can precede the moment one decides they want to invest in a wristwatch. What’s most intriguing is how totally different the process can be, based on the watch. For example, this one, and my journey to it. From a personal point of view, what leads me to that most happy of hashtags — #newwatchalert — more than anything else is research. Lots of collecting images. Lots of review reading. A constant saving of Instagram pics to my phone gallery. Updating my desktop to a high-res shot that captures it just so. This progresses, indubitably, to a ‘conversation’ (an attempt at a charm offensive, perfectly timed, with wine close at hand) with my wife, some ferrying around of funds, and eventually, all bridges crossed, a deal done. The interesting thing about the way I bought the H. Moser & Cie Pioneer with midnight blue dial is that none of these things happened. Not one. I didn’t have a single picture of it anywhere! Sure, I’d heard about it, I mean there’s always a bit of excitement when precious metal-only watches by great marques get released in…
Look back at Baselworld predictions over the last few years, and you’re likely to see a GMT from Tudor topping the list. Sure, some of us may have expected to see that little extra hour-telling-hand added to the Pelagos. But with the ever growing – and hugely popular – Black Bay collection proving to be the perfect base from which to begin, particularly after the introduction of the chronograph last year, I think it’s safe to say that we were all pleasantly surprised when Tudor unveiled a bicoloured Black Bay GMT this year at Basel. The Baselworld surprises didn’t stop there either, as parent company Rolex also released a Pepsi GMT. But having said that, this Heritage Black Bay is its own watch, with its own look and feel. Vital statistics Essentially, it’s a Black Bay. A stainless-steel 41mm case with polished sides and a satin-brushed top. The water resistance remains at 200 metres, and a black, domed dial features a mix of triangle, circle and rectangular hour markers. The differences begin at its bidirectional bezel. An even split of burgundy and blue, it’s a combination of the original colours of the first two Black Bays, except now the aluminium insert…
Mido is a name that might not be too familiar to our Australian readers, as the Swatch Group brand has had the most minimal of minimal presences on our shores until recently. But as it so happens, they’re celebrating their 100th anniversary this year, and they’re doing it with a strong collection of watches, like this new GMT addition to their venerable Multifort line. The Mido Multifort GMT — offered in either steel with a black dial, or rose gold PVD with a blue dial — is a good-looking unit, 42mm across on a classically styled 22mm three-link bracelet on the black dial, or faux croc on the blue. The case is a dual crown affair, for fans of the Super Compressor style, with the lower handling the time setting for home and local times, while the upper looks after the sloped internal bezel which is marked with 24-hour indication in the familiar night/day colour scheme. The dial is really very pretty, with Mido’s characteristic and clever use of Geneva stripes (typically a movement decoration) as a dial decoration. It works really well, adding just the right amount of pizzazz. Speaking of movements, the top grade ETA 2893-2 movement (Caliber 1193 in…
One of the Raymond Weil’s great strengths has always been stylish, sharp, everyday dress pieces, something that’s really epitomised in the Maestro line. Well, at Basel that line got a little bigger, with the addition of three new, blue-dialled options. These watches, like many things in the world of Raymond Weil, take their inspiration from the world of music — remember, the collection is called ‘Maestro’. But the Maestros we’re talking here aren’t your Chopins or Shostakoviches — no, as you’d expect, these blue dials pay homage to that most American of genres: blues. And while it’s a broad church, incorporating the haunting vocals of Billie Holiday, the visceral chords of John Lee Hooker, and everything in between, it’s a genre that is, at its heart, about emotion. And really, aside from the obvious blue connotation, these three watches do pull on the heart strings just a little. First of all, let’s look at the date version. Housed in a 40mm rose gold PVD case, the dial of this watch is a thing of beauty: the blue is dark and rich, caught somewhere between the deep sea and the sky at dusk. It’s made even more captivating by the mix…
Of all of Montblanc’s fine timepieces, I’ve had a soft spot for the distinctive Rieussec line, an uncommon take on the common chronograph that draws its inspiration from the daddy of them all, the original chronograph device invented by the eponymous Frenchman, Nicolas Rieussec. The Rieussec has been in the Montblanc family for a while, but to me it’s always occupied a somewhat liminal space, sitting above the more accessible TimeWalkers and their ilk, yet not quite in the same league as the famed Minerva-based chronographs. But that’s not to say that the Montblanc Rieussec isn’t a serious piece of kit, the MB R2000 is a solid movement, modern, with an interesting layout. It boasts a column wheel, vertical clutch and 72-odd hours of power. On top of that it looks darn good, too. That same statement definitely applies to the exterior of the watch as well. Fundamentally, the design of the big 44.8mm (and a good 15mm tall) watch’s dial has been tweaked; the date now has a more balanced, six o’clock position, instantly giving the watch a less cluttered look than previous iterations. But the changes don’t stop there. The heavily textured dial is dominated by the classical…