The Polaris Date by Jaeger-LeCoultre is an interesting timepiece, in part an everyday automatic watch, and in part a thoroughbred sports watch. It’s quite large at 42mm diameter and 13.1 mm thickness, but its steeply sloping lugs make it wearable and comfortable on the wrist. Vintage inspiration It’s interesting to compare the new Polaris Date…
The Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris Chronograph is a superb watch, with a clear dial, sapphire caseback, 100 metres water resistance, movement with column wheel and vertical clutch, and easily interchangeable straps. Its price makes it relatively unaccessible to most people but it is a dream of a watch. It celebrates the classic 1968 Polaris Memovox in its…
The Polaris Automatic by Jaeger-LeCoultre is the brand’s entry-level sports watch. They’ve done a lot of good things with this watch. To create a new sports watch – a tough watch that can survive all sorts of conditions, and in particular contact with water – they returned to an archive timepiece, the 1968 Memovox Polaris,…
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Polaris Chronograph WT is a fantastic watch, it does everything to perfection, and it combines the chronograph function with a very functional world time display. It’s large at 44 mm, but it wears smaller, it’s only 12.5 mm thick, and the use of titanium makes it pleasantly light – lighter than the Polaris Automatic…
The Polaris collection by Jaeger-LeCoultre was big news at SIHH, and the new Polaris Memovox is an important part of this new series of watches. They are all significant in that they mark a new departure for the brand, accessible sports watches. The new Memovox is visually based on the 1968 Memovox Polaris reference E859,…
In 2017, Jaeger-LeCoultre presents three new versions of watches in the Duomètre range, all with magnetite grey dial and pink gold case. The Sphérotourbillon is a superb watch, packed with significant content, refined over the course of the years. This version of the Sphérotourbillon looks far more modern than the previous model presented in 2012,…
The new Reverso watches that Jaeger-LeCoultre has introduced this year – following last year’s unorthodox, colourful Christian Louboutin collaboration as part of the 85th Reverso anniversary – are wholly classical pieces that confirm the incredible resilience of the design. Reverso is without doubt considered as the classic watch with unorthodox case design, successful above all…
There aren’t many brands making alarm watches. In addition to the Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox, there are the Vulcain Cricket and Tudor Advisor. The pioneer was Vulcain, which launched the Cricket in 1947, and the Memovox arrived in 1951. In 1956, Jaeger-LeCoultre gave Memovox an automatic movement, Calibre 815, making it the first automatic alarm watch. This…
The true second feature is an unusual complication because it contradicts one of the traditional characteristics of mechanical watches. In most watches, the second hand, moving in increments of a sixth, eighth or tenth of a second, creates an impression of a continuous sweep, very different from the one-second increments of a quartz watch. The…
The Reverso Tribute Gyrotourbillon by Jaeger-LeCoultre is an object of extraordinary beauty. Even though at 51.1 mm by 31 mm it’s a large piece, it is slim at 12.4 mm thickness. The contrast between the simple Art Deco lines of the platinum case and the complexity of the movement and its decoration makes the watch…
The Reverso story began in winter 1930-31, when Swiss businessman César de Trey was travelling in India. He traded in watches and other items, and the colonies were an excellent market for him. On that particular occasion, he was watching a polo match played by British army officers. One of them was wearing his watch…
The Reverso One Duetto Moon by Jaeger-LeCoultre is a watch with the complication that is traditionally associated with watches for women, the moon phase display. It is made in two versions, in steel and rose gold. The lunar display is in mother-of-pearl, against a speckled backdrop in dark blue (steel version) or chestnut red (pink gold…
The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso One Cordonnet is based on a 1936 watch, from which its leather cord strap has been derived. The Reverso case provides the playful touch that for 85 years has made the Reverso a favourite piece world-wide. The swivel mechanism is fun to operate and gets progressively smoother and easier as you get…
In this 85th anniversary year of the Reverso, it’s not surprising that Jaeger-LeCoultre are looking back to the features of the original 1930s model, with its Art Deco case, black dial and graceful Arabic numerals. As always with Jaeger-LeCoultre, the Reverso One Réédition conceals a lot of careful design thought. For example, the numerals of…
2016 marks the 85th anniversary of Jaeger-LeCoultre‘s Reverso, with several models celebrating the occasion, including this piece, the Reverso Tribute Calendar. It’s very easy to take a brand like Jaeger-LeCoultre for granted: they have a discreet, laid-back attitude. They don’t boast a lot about their achievements. They have many qualities: they have been a true…
A moon phase watch is not unusual, there are lots. What is unusual about the Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous Moon is that the moon phase has as an extraordinary degree of accuracy. A normal moon phase watch approximates the actual average duration of the lunar month, 29.530587981 days, to 29.5 days, by means of a wheel with 59 teeth…
Company profile: Self-taught watchmaker Antoine LeCoultre set up his first workshop in 1833, and to this day the Jaeger-LeCoultre Manufacture has been at the same location in Le Sentier, Vaud. About thirty years later, a time at which Swiss watchmaking was based primarily on outsourcing with individuals making movements in small home-run workshops. Antoine and…
This is a watch that demonstrates the depth of Jaeger-LeCoultre, whose range includes superb classical models, dress watches, jewellery watches, sports watches, and super-technical pieces such as this. The Master Compressor Extreme LAB 2 was originally launched in 2010, and this year a new version has been presented, with blue highlights instead of red, a…
The “Astral” theme was particularly strong at Jaeger-LeCoultre at SIHH in January, and the Duomètre Unique Travel Time was one of several watches in the show (others were by Montblanc and Greubel Forsey) featurinig a view of the earth from space. As if to underline that the stars and the planets harbour the origins of…
Asteroids are about 4.6 billion years old, and so incorporating a piece of asteroid (or meteorite) into an object designed to measure time is an interesting contrast. They date back to the formation of the solar system, and only very rarely reach the earth, because most burn in the atmosphere during their descent. Though many…