Vacheron Constantin has redesigned one of its legends, the Traditionnelle Chronograph Perpetual Calendar, giving it a new movement, Calibre 1142 QP. It is available in two versions, platinum and pink gold, and it is surprisingly large at 43 mm in diameter, 12.94 mm thick. The price is also large, around $150,000 for the platinum version.…
Often, when one brand buys another, the brand that has been absorbed gradually disappears from sight, such as the case of Bulgari and its purchase of Gerald Genta and Daniel Roth in 2000. Today, the two smaller brands have been entirely integrated into Bulgari, and there is no mention of the independent designers on the…
Hamilton’s Intra-Matic 68 Auto Chrono is closely based on their 1968 Chronograph B, as you can see from the two images below. The main difference is size. The 1968 Chronograph B was 36 mm in diameter, normal for men’s watches at that time, while the new Intra-Matic 68 is 42 mm in diameter, reflecting today’s…
The Avenger Hurricane Military by Breitling is truly super-tough in its looks, and its gigantic 50 mm case requires a bodybuilt wrist to wear it. I’m always a bit suspicious about unfit people wearing camouflage trousers, who make me think “Hey, come on, who are you kidding?” with the same sort of annoyance that I…
Hamilton created the Khaki Air Race watch to celebrate their sponsorship of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, for which they are official timer from this year, 2017. It doesn’t have any of the traditional pilot’s watch features, but the visual design has a lot in common with Panerai, for example the Radiomir 1940…
Cvstos spells things out. Definitely Cvstos and not Custos, and Regata, not regatta, because Regata is the original Medieval Latin word for a boat race. The Sealiner Chrono Regata, presented in 2016, was designed specifically for timing the complex series of manoeuvres leading up to the start of a regatta. Everything about this watch is…
You couldn’t exactly call them a popular theme in watches, but there have been several watches on a butterfly theme this year. Butterflies have all sorts of symbolic meanings, such as their short life which contrasts with the sense of eternity provided by a watch (Rabindranath Tagore , “The butterfly counts not months but moments,…
Panerai is an official partner of the 35th America’s Cup, and it has launched a series of watches made in collaboration with the event, and with the two teams Oracle Team USA and Softbank Team Japan. The most complex of these special edition watches is the Panerai Luminor 1950 Regatta Oracle Team USA 3 Days…
MB&F do a lot of things differently. With their Final Edition of Legacy Machine N°1, they are introducing another innovation: concluding a series with a special model that will be the last. 435 LM1 pieces have been built since its launch in 2011, making it MB&F’s second-most successful model after Horological Machine N°3. “Only by…
Women’s preferences as regards watches are a debated question. The main dichotomy is between quartz and mechanical. Brands such as Glashütte Original use quartz for their Pavonina watches and say that women prefer quartz because the watch is always running and so doesn’t need fiddly adjustment on a small crown. But, talking to a woman…