Watching the Watchmen

Smoking salmon

Vacheron Constantin’s latest ultra-thin beauty mixes platinum sheen with off-the-scales orange-blush colouration

At £103,000 for a time-only wristwatch, you might at least be wanting a seconds hand thrown into the bargain. But your money isn’t much to do with a mere hours and minutes hand. For a start, there’s over 260 years of continuous, restless expertise baked into every micron of Vacheron Constantin’s latest iteration of ‘Overseas’.

This ‘Ultra-Thin’ super-slimmer of Geneva’s most venerable maison and its most (ahem) ‘rugged’ design isn’t just a watch – it’s an inherently rare slice of horological pedigree. First, the movement inside is entirely in-house: the new Calibre 2550 is an diaphanous automatic engine just 2.4 mm thick, developed over seven years of research and engineering.

It uses an advanced micro-rotor and suspended double-barrel design to deliver an impressive 80-hour power reserve while maintaining an impossibly slim profile. Plus of course, there’s all that 950-grade platinum: dense, scarce, with a highly desirable sheen that jealous white-gold wearers know only too well.

Vacheron Constantin Overseas Ultra-Thin in platinum, limited to 255, £103,000

Vacheron Constantin

Overseas Ultra-Thin in platinum

£103,000

Limited to 255

Buy Now - £103,000

Anniversary for the Annual

Thirty years have passed since Patek Philippe coined a classic – and its new calendar celebrates in style

Most major horological advancements in fine watchmaking happened a long time ago. The stopwatch chronograph? Minted by Monsieur Moinet in 1816. The merry-go-round tourbillon? One Abraham-Louis Breguet, 1801. The perpetual calendar? Who knows really, but probably Thomas Mudge back in 18th century London.

There is one complication that doesn’t fit that mould, however. It might sound like it’s been around forever, but the annual calendar was only introduced in 1996. As the name implies, it needs adjusting just once a year, and for that matter, it’s a great deal cheaper than a perpetual.

Instead of the latter’s taking into account February’s 28 days as well as leap years, Patek Philippe’s annual calendar innovation, three decades’ back, takes into account the four months lasting 30 days rather than 31, so the only time you need adjust the date is on the 28 or 29 February – otherwise the mechanism ‘assumes’ that February is always 30 days long.

This year, Geneva’s favourite son has just the ticket for the birthday celebrations: a sunburst-brushed ‘sand beige’ dial with rose gold faceted ‘obus’ hour markers, tracked by rose-gold faceted ‘dauphine’ dagger hands, so typical of Patek’s coolest Calatrava dress pieces.