11 watches to clock this summer

As the evenings stretch on, affording more time out than ever, here’s our pick of the pieces ticking the boxes for us this summer

Ever-glamorous, ever-innovative Chopard is celebrating 25 years of its Quattro: a watch that triple-handedly set out the historic brand’s redux at the familial hands of Pforzheim’s Scheufele jewellery dynasty. Topped by a stippled and highly on-trend textured dial, a four-barrelled powerhouse of springs gently feeds Chopard’s exquisitely hand-polished ‘LUC’ mechanics with nine days of autonomous ‘tick’.In platinum, too. £43,100

Patek Philippe’s new eight-day hand-wound movement has launched dressed in surprisingly contemporary guise. Not only does Geneva’s historic horloger progress its traditionally buttoned-up Calatrava in stippled dial and mid-century indices as nattily dubbed ‘reference 5328G-001’, but the Calibre 31-505 8J PS IRM CI J ticking inside is regulated by silicon implants: antimagnetic, self-lubricated and built to last. £60,550

Two-hundred and seventy years not out: a huge anniversary to celebrate in every which way, especially when it’s the longest continuous existence in all of Swiss watchmaking. Sure enough, Vacheron Constantin is following up a steel reissue of its rakish 70s 222, plus nothing short of the world’s most complicated wristwatch (the double-dial Solaria), with a new iteration of the sporty Overseas collection, in a more complicated guise than ever. The Grand Complication Openface truly tests the limits of what constitutes a ‘sports’ watch, especially in combination with a chiming minute repeater, plus ever-correct perpetual calendar and tourbillon carriage ticking and tumbling centrestage.

£POA

Beyond its timeless design, a so-called Lightmaster Solar Technology uses photovoltaic cells, integrated beneath the sapphire crystal dome, to convert natural and artificial light into energy. To wit: 10 minutes of light exposure translating to a day of battery life. £450

The smashed-up single-seater and SUV camera car adorning IWC’s pavilion at April’s Watches & Wonders fair left no-one in any doubt: the watchmaker is set to play a major role in F1 starring Brad Pitt. His character wears an Ingenieur SL 40mm in Pitt’s favoured colour green, limited to 1000. £11,100

The principle is simple: if the customer wishes to purchase a watch of this type, he or she must confirm the order by paying a quarter of the price, just as 700 timepieces were produced for more than 30 years, paving the way for fine watchmaking as we know it. £45,700

The 1957 Rail-master makes a welcome return. It is plenty fit for electrical-engineer approval, since it’s always been resistant to magnetic fields of up to 1,000 gauss. Today it’s been certified by the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS) to 15,000 gauss. 38mm model pictured. £5,400

​​With a case entirely rendered in carbon fibre, this brings F1 technology to bear on its racers’ wrists, in pleasing contrast to the overall F1 sponsor TAG Heuer and its sustainable Solargraph collection. With a column-wheel-mediated in-house stopwatch function and an aesthetic inspired by Tudor’s pitlane bedfellow, the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls Formula One Team, Rolex is keeping pedal firmly to metal. £6,260

Blancpain continues its dedication to ocean exploration with not only an ongoing conservancy CSR campaign but an extraordinary discovery: the first living coelacanth of the Maluku archipelago in Indonesia. Once believed to have vanished 70 million years ago, the elusive ‘dinosaur fish’ or ‘Raja Laut’ (‘king of the sea’ in local Indonesian language) has once again revealed itself, allowing Alexis Chappuis and UNSEEN Expeditions to bring back the first images of this species (Latimeria menadoensis) ever taken by divers in its natural habitat. With his trusty, luminescent Blancpain Fifty Fathoms keeping track of oxygen reserves, of course.

Nomos Glashütte’s Club Sport Worldtimer/Weltzeit takes the post-Wall, reunified German uhrmacher from Bauhaus to funhouse. The 24-hour display at three o’clock shows the second time-zone so you’re never in danger of calling junior past bedtime. £3,940

Since 2007, the archive raid that was Legend Diver not only forged a trend for sepia-tinted retro revivals in Swiss horology, but established a sub-collection in its own right, ‘#nodate’. With a white dial and versatile 39mm diameter, this new sixties classic already feels more 2025 than 1959. £3,150

This article was taken from the Summer 2025 issue of Gentleman's Journal

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