No longer a statement piece just for men, mechanical watches with the highest craftsmanship are showing up on the wrists of modern women. Intricate functionality is wedded with stunning design, resulting in the ultimate status symbol for female powerbrokers.
Every single timepiece is crafted with passion, with months upon months spent integrating each detail. Extraordinary watches for extraordinary women. Ladies, you know what time it is….
Patek Philippe has taken the idea of ladies’ timepieces further launching this magnificent World Time watch. It indicates all 24 time zones in a new white-gold version with gray-blue hand-guilloched dial center. The delicate nuance, illuminated by the sparkle of diamonds, also comes to the fore on the city disk and the shine peacock-blue alligator strap.
Technical details: Reference 7130 World Time. Self-winding mechanical movement. 24-hour and day/night indication for the 24 time zones. Bezel set with 62 diamonds. Gray-blue dial, hand guilloched and gold applied markers. Alligator strap with square scales, hand-stitched, prong buckle set with 27 diamonds. Water resistant to 30 meters.
Blancpain is keeping its tradition introducing the new Date Moon Phases women’s timepiece in the Villeret collection. The opaline dial of this rose gold watch is swept over by solid leaf-shaped hands, a pointer-type date display and a sapphire moon-phase indication. Technical details: 913QL movement equipped with a glucydur balance wheel featuring gold micrometric regulating screws as well as a balance spring in silicon. This material recently introduced within the watch industry offers several important advantages. Firstly, its low density makes it lighter and thus more shock-resistant enhancing timekeeping precision. Bezel set with 48 full-cut diamonds. This new timepiece is fitted with a taupe-coloured alligator strap.
Breguet has succeeded in feminizing a model whose aesthetic essence lies in mechanical horology, a field that many tend to reserve for men. The Breguet Tradition Dame 7038 has therefore been recreated especially for ladies. Clearly visible front and center of the watch, the barrel is decorated with a rosette motif and overlapped at 12 o’clock by a dainty offset dial in natural white mother-of-pearl, finely adorned with hand-crafted engine-turned “Clous de Paris” hob-nailing. The sandblasted main plate and bridges are rhodium-plated to create a pleasing contrast with the rose gold case. The latter’s bezel is adorned with 68 brilliant-cut diamonds, while a watch jewel sets the perfect finishing touch to the crown. Technical details: Cal. 505SR. Alligator strap with gold pin buckle set with 19 brilliant-cut diamonds. Water resistant to 30 meters.
Jaquet Droz launched a masterpiece with the Loving Butterfly Automaton, this piece of art tells a story, that of genius watchmaker, Henri-Louis Jacques-Droz who 242 years ago, created an android automaton delivering breath-taking sketches – including a cherub seated on a chariot drawn by a butterfly, celebrating love and passion. Jaquet Droz designers, craftsmen and watchmakers decided to draw inspiration from this sketch for contemporary design, first as painted enamel, then as sculpture, and today as an automaton watch. The famous dial of the Petite Huere Minute has been adapted as a naturalistic theatre stage. With the grace and delicacy, the butterfly comes to life, pulling behind in an animated chariot. Love is in motion and this dreamlike and deliciously refined design triggers instant astonishment. Technical details: Forty hand-engraved parts in white or rose gold are assembled manually, from the small Cupid’s arms and defiant face, to the infinitely fragile legs and antennae of the butterfly. The trees, only 0.2 mm thick, are individually driven like the hands of a watch. The fine gold volumes contrast with the dial in onyx or Polynesian black mother-of-pearl. The exclusive automaton mechanism took three years to develop. The power reserve allows the butterfly to delicately flutter its wings 300 times over a period of two minutes. This extraordinary timepiece is limited to 28 pieces.
Bulgari is a past master in the art of turning women’s heads and has indeed been doing so for over 130 years. Inspired by the pure, sensual lines of its jewellery creations, the ladies’ watches from the Rome-based jeweller combine elegance with sensuality. With the new LVCEA Tourbillon watches, a major horological complication now enlivens this ultra-feminine watch dedicated to celebrating light. The joyful and chic LVCEA watches are an invitation to rapt contemplation, featuring fascinating light effects fostered by the harmonious design of their case and dials. LVCEA Tourbillon is no exception to this rule and allows light to invade its two dials, since Bulgari is presenting two variations for this 38 mm-diameter round watch in 18 carats gold. One is graced with a purple dial made of hearth of ruby, a spiritual colour much appreciated by Romans, framed by a white gold case. The other comes in a shade evoking the beauties of nature, as well as precious Oriental objects, with its green jade dial. Technical details: Automatic movement with Tourbillon, indication of the hours and minutes, Calibre BVL263, 64-hour power reserve. 38mm cases in rose or white gold, bezel set with 46 brilliant-cut diamonds; dial in jade for the rose gold version, hearth of ruby for the white gold version, set with diamond hour-makers; water resistant to 50 meters on a green glossy alligator leather strap for the rose gold version or purple for the white gold version, pin buckle in rose or white gold set with 24 brilliant-cut diamonds.
Graff’s delicate new MasterGraff Floral Tourbillon is an exercise in savoir faire. The rich and romantic language of flowers has long inspired the design of Graff jewellery. It naturally follows that this most classic of decorative details is equally appropriate in timekeeping, as Graff’s new Floral Tourbillon collection of watches elegantly demonstrates. Great consideration has gone into not only the watches’ flora-inspired forms, but their feel, finish and equilibrium, requiring continuous dialogue and collaboration between the London atelier and the artisans in Geneva. The result is a beautifully designed watch, adorned with flowers that rotate on themselves and featuring softly rounded hands. But the true luxury is in the details. The enamel flowers are created using an ancient yet extremely challenging process, resulting in a colour that is exclusive to each individual watch. Once the colours have been perfected by the artist (this frequently takes many tests), a dial can take up to fifty hours to complete. The same maker is also responsible for hand-cutting each one of the flowers from white gold, before hand treating and painting every petal. Technical details: Tourbillon at 5 o’clock, manual winding. 68-hour power reserve. White gold case with Tahitian, blue or orange mother-of-pearl with white gold “hand-cut” flowers, high fire enamel and paint finish.
Harry Winston’s constant exploration in the field of rare artistic crafts has resulted in the creation of two singular dials for the Premier Collection. An inimitable luxury product made from embossed raw silk, the Premier Delicate Silk Automatic 36mm models mark, for the first time, the artistic marriage of silk and the art of embossing. Silk has always been considered the most precious natural fabric and was first developed in ancient China over 4,000 years ago. Originally reserved for Emperors, a growing demand for the luxurious textile led to the opening of the Silk Route, a vast network of trade routes connecting the East to the West. Because of its rich historical symbolism and innate beauty, the House of Harry Winston decided to use silk as the backdrop for its new dial. Unlike anything done before in the history of silk production, Harry Winston designers embarked on a new project and used a novel technique that encourages the silkworm to weave its own fabric. The result is a delicate, small area of raw silk created without the interaction of human hands. This gift of raw silk, produced directly by nature, was then dyed to obtain four colours which form the background of the dial: an intense royal red, a silvery grey, a pure white and a delicate imperial pink hue. Technical details: Calibre HW2008, mechanical, automatic. Case in rose or white gold, set with 57 brilliant-cut diamonds, buckle set with 17 brilliant-cut diamonds. Power-reserve up to 72 hours.
Chanel is celebrating its 30th Anniversary of the Première watch this year in October by proudly introducing its second in-house calibre in the Première Camelia Skeleton watch. Within the last 30 years the House has touched on every métier contributing to the art of Fine Watchmaking. When Chanel first created this extraordinary watch, no one was expecting it. So it was called Première, French for First. In watchmaking, the Première was the first watch created exclusively by Chanel for women; drawing on the shape of the N°5 bottle stopper and the Place Vendôme. Unlike anything before, this timepiece, destined for women and defining a uniquely feminine style, was not a simple reworking of a man’s watch. The Première , whose femininity is embodied by original ambassador Ines de la Fressange, is both an authentic timekeeper and a statement of style, or as some would say fashion accessory. This duality is not embraced by Chanel but serves as a source of pride, and is captured by the rich meaning and fitting name behind the watch. With the launch of the Première Camelia Skeleton watch this year, Chanel opened the first chapter of the great story between the House and the world of Watchmaking. With it, Chanel gave time the place it deserved: a surface without limits, dials or markers. A surface both flat and smooth, over which endless possibilities could glide. Technical details: Chanel in-house calibre. New skeleton movement representing camellia, one of the iconic symbols of the House, this new timepiece is an expression of the liberty of the Studio of Creation. White gold set with brilliant-cut and baguette-cut diamonds.
