The IW379108 watch was introduced in 2012 in a red gold case and has remained virtually identical since then. A steel version was presented in 2015, and the only new feature in the model that IWC introduced in 2016 is the brown calfskin strap by Santoni, with its orange lining. The digital date and month…
IWC have been making their Pilot’s Watch Chronograph since 2006, and this year, this family of IW3777 watches have only minimal differences with respect to the series introduced in 2012. The dial has been tidied up, removing the minute numerals that were previously incorporated into the chapter ring, and removing the triple date display. Apart…
This pilot’s watch by IWC is distinctive for its tobacco brown dial and calfskin strap with cream-coloured contrasting stitching, one of the brand’s hallmarks for its watches made in cooperation with charity organization Fondation Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is a close relation to the Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph Edition “Le Petit Prince,” reference IW371807, presented…
This watch is one of IWC’s purest pilot watch designs, with just the date and power reserve subdial added to the classic layout. The 2016 version presented at SIHH in January has been slightly reduced in size, from 48 to 46 mm, 15 mm thick, with black ceramic case, titanium caseback and screw-in conical crown.…
The design of the IWC Top Gun Miramar is based on the B-Uhr Type B watches commissioned by the Luftwaffe in the 1930s and ‘40s and made then by IWC, A. Lange & Söhne, Wempe, Lacher & Company (now Laco), and Walter Storz (Stowa). Type B had two scales on the dial, an outer ring…
The IWC Schaffhausen Pilot’s Watch Mark XVIII comprises three references that are entry-level models and are also the closest thing to a 1940s pilot’s watch in the 2016 IWC collection. They have calfskin straps made by Santoni, with the Italian fashion footwear brand’s signature orange lining, or a metal bracelet. The 40mm case (11 mm…
IWC’s new Pilot’s Watch Timezoner Chronograph has an interesting complication: a world time function based on a sprung rotating bezel that you have to depress to turn, and which shows the time and date in another time zone, along with the 24-hour hand that functions as a day/night indicator. It has a busy dial, but…
These watches by IWC translate the pilot’s watch aesthetic into dimensions that seem small today, but that are wholly justified by historical watches. The original IWC Mark XI was 35 mm in diameter and so a millimetre smaller than the new models. Today, 36-mm watches of this type are ideal for people with smaller wrist…
The IWC Big Pilot’s Watch Annual Calendar Edition “Le Petit Prince” (reference IW502701) places last year’s Portugieser Annual Calendar into a pilot’s frame. The case in red gold, 46 mm diameter and 15.5 mm thick, is a couple of millimetres larger than the Portugieser, and so the calendar indications at the top are not quite…
Make no mistake about it, IWC’s latest collection of pilot’s watches presented on 18 January at SIHH in Geneva is phenomenal, a whole range of timepieces that includes technically innovative watches such as the Pilot’s Watch Timezoner Chronograph in which a second time zone can be set by turning the bezel, and pilot’s watches in…
This watch by Laurent Ferrier was born from the idea of putting SuperLuminova on a watch to make it legible in the dark. Laurent Ferrier’s classically-inspired watches usually have very slim, elegant hands that would not be suitable for SuperLuminova, and so for this piece he redesigned the hands into a slightly broader configuration with…
Company profile: Laurent Ferrier, born in 1946, is a third-generation watchmaker who trained at the Geneva school of watchmaking, and spent his working life, 37 years, at a famous maison in Geneva, developing prototype movements and then the creative design of timepieces. When he retired, he and his greatest friend François Servanin were able to…
The Piaget Emperador Coussin XL 700P brings quartz into a mechanical watch. Will purists like it? Who knows. But it is a bold, perhaps even revolutionary move, and Piaget are able to describe it as “the most precise mechanical watch in Switzerland.” Piaget has long made its own quartz movements – the name of this…
Watchmaking brand Parmigiani Fleurier revealed that it is working on a new watch movement that could produce a revolution in the mechanical watch industry. Normally a mechanical watch has a power reserve – the time that the watch will keep running from when its mainspring is fully wound – of about 40 hours, with some,…
One of the most surprising things that is happening in high-end watches is that the hallowed ground of mechanical movements is beginning to be violated by electronics. One example is the Piaget Emperador Coussin XL 700P presented at SIHH 2016, which has a totally mechanical gear train powered by a conventional oscillating weight, but also…
The first timepieces in history were the earth and the moon. Our prehistoric ancestors observed the sequences of day and night, the seasons and the phases of the moon, and used them to devise the earliest forms of measuring time. In this watch by Bovet 1822, the case, 46 mm in diameter and 18 mm…
In its most recent watches, H. Moser is showing attention not only to engineering, design and marketing, but also to the sociological aspects of watchmaking. The Concept Watch presented in May 2015 has a dial reduced to the bare minimum: the brand’s hallmark graded fumé dial, three hands, but no indices, logo, or any other…
Audemars Piguet is one of the oldest watch manufacturers still controlled by its founding families, and its history is closely linked to Switzerland’s watchmaking history. Both the Audemars and the Piguet families were living in the Vallée de Joux, and in the 1700s they, like many families in this area with very hard winters, were…
Autodromo is a brand founded in Brooklyn by Bradley Price, industrial designer with a passion for motoring and more specifically, Italian cars such as Alfa Romeo and Lancia. Even the name evokes the motor-racing circuit at Monza, location of the Italian Formula One Grand Prix. After the 2014 Autodromo Stradale, an automatic watch based on…
H. Moser’s first perpetual calendar won the GPHG Grand Prix in 2006; the watch was relaunched in 2013, and it is still a fresh-looking piece in the realm of perpetual calendars that usually have lots of subdials and windows. The Endeavour Perpetual Calendar Funky Blue, a version launched in 2015 at about the same time…