It wouldn’t be fair of me to write this review without stating upfront that this brand is one of my all-time favourites for a host of reasons that run the gamut from history to craftsmanship and more. Still, I refused to let that cloud my judgment as I was wearing the Little Lange 1 Moon Phase watch, an elegant and slightly different conception of Haute-Horlogerie for Ladies.
The other day I had the distinct pleasure of spending a few days with A. Lange & Söhne in Florence, Italy. The main purpose was the launch of the Lange 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar Handwerkskunst and four new blue dial version (Lange 1, Lange 1 Daymatic, Saxonia and Saxonia handwound), all of which we already showed you last weekend. The team at Lange organized several ‘field trips’ to various handcrafts, like lithography, fabric weaving and printing, among others, and we visited one of the most prestigious winemakers from Tuscany (the region in which Florence is located.) Wilhelm Schmid, the brand’s CEO, tells us more about Handwerkskunst and handcrafts, plus I’ll share wrist shots of a group of Lange collectors whom I accidentally ran into. Be warned… LOTS of photos!
Tutima has a long and prestigious history; the origins of the brand go as far back as the 1920s and 1930s in Glasshütte, when Tutima was the quality label of the UROFA-UFAG group. After the fall of the Berlin wall, several watchmakers looked at reviving the Saxon watchmaking tradition and the ‘made in Germany’ trademark, specifically in Glasshütte. Among them was Dieter Delecate, owner and CEO of Tutima, then headquarted in the north of Germany, near Bremen.
The vast majority of people are comfortable with watches which simply display hours and minutes, but for globetrotters, frequent travellers and those doing business around the world, a dual-time (or so-called GMT in certain cases) watch is highly practical and purposeful for their daily travelling needs. We have picked 6 GMT watches of 2017, with choices to suit every pocket and taste.
This article first started its life as a classical review, as we like to do here, on Monochrome. However, as I was drawing it in my mind, I quickly understood that the Laurent Ferrier Montre Ecole was a perfect piece to do something slightly different, to write an article with a different structure. In fact, we often have questions about how high-end watches can cost such incredibly high prices. Well, today, by properly dissecting this Montre Ecole, I’ll tend to explain why a 3-hand watch in stainless steel can be priced CHF 35,000 – and indeed, it’s all about the smallest details…
Some categories in the watch world are more difficult than others. The “Luxury Sports-Watch” certainly is amongst the toughest ones. Narrow, precisely defined, requiring the highest standards of quality, luxury, and mechanics, driven by a few, very strong icons… Entering it is complex. Renewing one of its members is close from a dead-end. This is however what Vacheron Constantin achieved with the new Overseas collection, introduced in 2016, and today we look at the “standard” offer, the Overseas Automatic 4500V.
MB&F has always been built around collaborations with other watchmakers/designers/friends. All about the brand turns around collaborations, which led to the creation, over the 11 years of existence of the brand, of some of the boldest watches of modern days. But not only… These joint-ventures also brought some ultra-cool pieces, such as music machines or timekeeping UFOs, a mix between art sculptures and table clocks. After Destination Moon, Balthazar or Melchior, all of them inspired by space and sci-fi, here is Octopod, the newest collab table-clock made with L’Epée 1839 – and this time we move into aquatic themes.
Blue dials have been one of the major trends of the watch industry for the 2 to 3 years. As we often read: “blue is the new black“. Yet, the exercise isn’t that simple. Blue is a complex colour and, if some watches with blue dials were noticeable, many failed to bring the right dosage of enthusiasm. A. Lange & Söhne, a brand known not to follow the trends, took its time to jump on the moving train, yet it now comes with such coloured dials on 4 emblematic watches: the Lange 1, the Lange 1 Daymatic, the Saxonia and the Saxonia Automatic – but beware, these won’t be available in large numbers, neither for a long period.
A few days ago, we showed you a new watch introduced by A. Lange & Söhne, the 1815 “Cuvette” Limited Edition. Well, this was not the only novelty the Saxonia-based brand had to show us in this month of September 2017. Be prepared, because what Lange just launched is both impressive, complex, demonstrative, rare and superbly executed. Here is the “Handwerkskunst” edition of the highly respectable A. Lange & Söhne 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar. And those who are experienced with the brand know what is hidden behind this quite barbarian German word…
It’s now time to lift the veil on the big and truly exciting news we had anticipated further to Jean-Claude Biver’s (President of the LVMH watch division) and Julien Tornare’s (CEO of Zenith) press conference last May: a groundbreaking development in the field of chronometry, exploring unchartered territories and challenging the basic operating principle of the mechanical watch regulation, invented in 1675 by Christiaan Huygens – a principle that has remained basically unchanged since its creation. The name of this watch is the Zenith DEFY LAB, and it comes with a revolutionary, yet technically quite simple, type of oscillator.