SIHH 2015 - Watches to Watch

 

It’s that time of the year again. The start of every new year means the first big watch trade show of the year – the Salon Internationale de la Haute Horlogerie, is ready with its surprises. That there will be several big reveals at SIHH is a given. Here are some highlights of the top watches this year.

 

 

For its 75th birthday, IWC has relaunched its Portuguese line. Note the slight twist in the name. It is now the Portugeiser. The perpetual calendar features a double moon phase, which simultaneously shows you where the moon is in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Projections of various movements, dial colours and case colours give the model an endless series of new faces, while a direct connection to the Internet enable it to display the current time. The annual calendar shows the month, date and day in three separate, semicircular windows. The switching mechanism automatically takes into account the differing lengths of individual months. Unlike a perpetual calendar, however, the annual calendar is unable to factor in the differing length of the month of February or the leap years. www.iwc.com

 

Baume & Mercier celebrates tomorrow’s talents through the new Classima. This collection looks towards the new generation, and motivates it to take on new challenges, proudly accompanying them on the road to success. Placing itself as affordable luxury, yet bearing the name of Baume & Mercier, this collection will naturally be sought after by young people who are proud of their first academic or professional successes. The collection comes in a variety of designs for men and women, bearing alligator straps in various colours, or elegant, metallic straps. Most of the models offer a glimpse into the mechanism with a sapphire caseback. www.baume-et-mercier.com

 

 

It is one of the most highly rated watch lines. Excalibur by Roger Dubuis, with its legendary connotations and its memorable design codes including a round case, fluted bezel, triple lugs, dedicated Dauphine hands, has become the emblem of a subtly offbeat, unconventional and unexpected approach to watchmaking traditions. Roger Dubuis presents two skeleton-work Excalibur creations in 2015, one of which is the Excalibur Spider Skeleton Flying Tourbillion, where the skeleton theme goes beyond the movement alone, now extending it to encompass a skeletonized case, flange and hands. Inspired from the complexities of a spider’s web, this latest collection gives an unconventional twist in true Roger Dubuis fashion. It actively endows the latter with the stature of a true contemporary art form serving a three-fold purpose: improved visibility, intricate sculptural effects and enhanced transparency. www.rogerdubuis.com

 

The Datograph Up/Down is endowed with milestone technical features: a classic column-wheel control mechanism, a precisely jumping minute counter and a flyback function come together in a movement showcasing true engineering finesse. The aesthetic quality of the calibre is reflected by the balanced dial layout with the characteristic Lange outsize date and the two argenté subsidiary dials for the seconds and the minute counter forming an equilateral triangle. UP stands for the maximum power reserve of 60 hours when fully wound, while DOWN means that the energy of the mainspring has been depleted and the pink-gold arrow enters the red zone of the indicator. The black dial made of solid silver is embedded in an 18-carat pink-gold 41 mm case. Luminous hands and pink-gold baton hour markers accentuate the aesthetic design. The sapphire-crystal caseback allows the many components to be observed in action. www.alange-soehne.com

 

The new Master Calendar is endowed with all the attributes that have forged the success of this line, It is also imbued with an intriguing appeal exercising its own laws of gravity, thanks to the choice of meteorite stone to compose its dial. In this new watch, the strange and fascinating meteorite stone used for the dial shakes up the traditionally pure, understated aesthetic of the Master Calendar. To get a perfect dial, this block of meteorite is cut into several thin plates in a process involving countless precautions, until the exact plate corresponding to the demands imposed by Jaeger-LeCoultre is achieved. The cleverly mastered dial architecture ensures immediate and pleasing readings of the information, with hours and minutes shown by dauphine hands and small seconds at 6 o’clock. With a 39 mm-diameter, this 10.6 mm-thick case is designed to adapt to the curve of any wrist. Master artisans have fitted an automatic movement with a full calendar inside the case. This concern for detail runs all the way to the very heart of the watch. www.jaeger-lecoultre.com