HANDS ON: The Piaget Limelight Gala – winner of the GPHG ladies’ watch prize lands in Sydney
Coming face-to-face with an award-winner can be nerve-wracking. When you’ve watched from afar, seen photographs, read reviews, you’re always curious to know whether things will live up to the hype. These days, after all, it’s spin that makes the world go round. So, yes, the preamble to meeting Piaget’s pink gold Limelight Gala, complete with Milanese bracelet, was understandably tense. This was just a couple of weeks after it had won the ladies’ watch prize at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) – what if, away from her wintry hemisphere of choice, she wilted under the harsh Australian sun? What if, in this chaotic, exhausting lead-up to Christmas, I mis-shuffled my facial expressions, and instead of a ‘Wow’ dealt out a yawn? I needn’t have worried. She may have been a long way from her Swiss home, but as with all the true divas, there were no signs of jet lag. She was golden. And I don’t merely mean ‘made of gold’ – even though that’s true: 18k pink gold. I’m talking about a radiance that somehow goes beyond the material. Golden like sun-kissed sand. Like maple syrup. Like the light just before sunset on a summer’s evening. Too poetic?…
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The story in a second Blancpain has upped the ante on last year’s excellent Ocean Commitment watch, with a second – even bluer – limited edition. These days it’s not unique for a watch brand to have a corporate social responsibility program, usually tied in with a limited edition product. Few, however, do it with the level of integrity and (dare we say it) commitment as Blancpain’s work in marine conservation and research programs. Though the Ocean Commitment program itself is comparatively young, Blancpain has donated a total of roughly seven million Euro over the past seven years. But beyond this, the Bathyscaphe Flyback Chronograph Ocean Commitment II wears its marine allegiances on its sleeve, so to speak, thanks to a unique case. The case The most arresting feature of this watch is the case. On last year’s version, we swore black and (appropriately enough) blue that the case was metal rather than brushed ceramic. This year, the hi-tech nature of the material has been made abundantly clear. For the first time, Blancpain has produced an entirely blue ceramic case, made possible thanks to the addition of pigment and a binding agent into the powdered ceramic during production – a…