This launch offering from Breitling’s new Chronoworks ‘performance lab’ soups up the brand’s in-house B01 chronograph calibre by introducing a ceramic baseplate and geartrain, which thanks to its self-lubricating properties, does away with the need for any bearing jewels or sticky oil. There’s also an antimagnetic and self-lubricating silicon escapement, plus an ingenious means of enhancing the timekeeping mechanism’s engagement with the chronograph mechanism: a connecting pinion with pronged ‘elastic’ teeth, ensuring the tightest possible meshing of gears.
It’s the poster boy for Tudor’s renaissance, and yet, amazingly, the Heritage Black Bay was only reissued a few years back. It wasn’t even called the Black Bay in the first place – rather, ‘Submariner’. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Switzerland’s modern-day genius Hans Wilsdorf founded his Tudor label in 1946, 40 years after founding Rolex, as ‘a watch that our agents could sell at a more modest price, that would attain the standards of dependability for which Rolex is famous’. Less than a decade later, he launched the Tudor equivalent, quickly adopted by Naval frogmen the world over. This model in burgundy is the highlight, complete with ‘shoulder-less’ crown of the Fifties, encircled by a bezel of such rich burgundy, you’ll want to pair it with a fine cheese.
The archive at Longines’ museum in Saint-Imier is positively bulging from 180 years of turbulent history, and the designers upstairs have been having considerable fun raiding it in recent years. The most famous artefacts are, without question, the navigational timepieces that accompanied aviator pioneers such as Charles Lindbergh in the Thirties and Forties. This voluptuously quirky number, carrying the US Army designation of ‘Type A-7’, wasn’t, despite appearances, a Friday job from the bench of a cock-eyed watchmaker – its chronograph’s diagonal orientation meant that is could be worn inside a pilot’s wrist and align perfectly with the orientation of the cockpit instruments when observed for synchronisation.
For some watch brands, a simple hours-minutes-seconds timepiece would be deemed an ‘entry-level’ model. But there’s no such thing at Vacheron Constantin – it’s merely an even more elegant and classical means of expressing 260-odd years’ worth of craftsmanship in the name of Switzerland’s oldest watchmaker. Framed by pink gold, the dial’s every element is an invisible balancing act. Turn it over, and the manually wound calibre 4400, unobscured by a rotor, is a feast for the eyes. Every edge, facet and surface has been hand-finished to the standards of the ‘Poinçon de Genève’ – an obsessive culture of polishing that extends to tiny, buried components that only other watchmakers will ever be able to admire.
Based in the town of Glashütte, cradle of fine German watchmaking, over the road from Richemont’s A. Lange & Söhne and Swatch Group’s Glashütte Original, indie upstart Nomos Glashütte has a lot to prove. Not that the pressure shows – in fact, this rather wonderful watchmaker manages to combine killer Bauhaus modernism and in-house horology with irresistible charm at bafflingly affordable prices. Critically, Nomos removes the design process from the watchmakers themselves, instead nurturing a studio in east Berlin that draws from the rich, local seam of hipster aesthetes. Its recent masterpiece is ‘Metro’ – a collection inspired by its own draughtsmen’s cosmopolitan lifestyle. As crisp, clean and legible as Harry Beck’s original Tube map.
All photographs by Benedict Morgan
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