My highly anticipated McLaren experience started one Thursday morning in late June . . . and ended on a sunny afternoon in mid-October, when as soon as I climbed into the contoured green Alcantara stitched seat, pulled down the Mantis-green door, and adjusted the seat and mirrors, I set off down the A22 toward Portimao and the Algarve Race Circuit. The noise of the 3.8-liter V8 would be my soundtrack for this journey.
Montblanc has announced the creation of the Montblanc Watch Division, headed by Davide Cerrato, the man who chiefly steered Tudor to its current renaissance as its vice-president of marketing, design, and product development. Cerrato joins Montblanc as its new managing director for the fresh “watch division” and will be based at the Montblanc Manufacture in Le Locle, Switzerland.
On September 17, 2015 Vacheron Constantin presented a milestone in the history of timekeeping: Reference 57260, the world’s most complicated portable timepiece to date with an incredible 57 functions and indications. And to commemorate it, Vacheron Constantin released a very special film called “The Witnesses.”
The Saatchi Gallery on Kings Road in trendy Chelsea has played host to SalonQP in London for the past four years. It is a fantastic venue and a great place for the brands attending to showcase their wares.
What an eclectic mix of brands and watches on show this year, too! Come with me on a virtual tour.
I’m just back from an excellent SalonQP 2015. The exhibition was awash with fantastic timepieces, but here’s one that caught my eye: a unique piece Parallax Tourbillon in platinum with black dial and bright red highlights by Bart and Tim Grönefeld, two excellent fraternal watchmakers from the Netherlands.
Even though the Freak is a staple of avant-garde watchmaking, I am continuously impressed by the continual improvements and inventions added to it. That is why the most recent edition is the most appropriately named: it announces right there in the name – Ulysse Nardin FreakLab – that it’s the wrist-sized testing lab!
Every once in a while an independent watchmaker or boutique brand comes along with something of truly unprecedented ingenuity. Once such piece is Cabestan’s Triple Axis Tourbillon, which was first presented at Baselworld 2015. Boasting a triple-axis tourbillon escapement as well as an unorthodox design and technical construction, the Cabestan Triple Axis Tourbillon is one for the books.
For once I’m going to be a typical woman and talk about something uniquely female here: the preparation that goes into planning an outfit for a large event. In this case, the large event being the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, watchmaking’s biggest night. The hardest and most important part, however, was deciding what to do about my jewelry and which watch to wear. So, naturally, I turned to my friends at Chopard.
I’m all for evolution, especially continual evolution in watchmaking. However, from time to time we need revolution as well as evolution, and the former is severely lacking. While MB&F’s Legacy Machine Perpetual looks to all intents and purposes like one of the least radical timepieces created in the brand’s ten-year history, make no mistake: it is revolution, not evolution.
The year 2015 marks Caran d’Ache’s 100th anniversary. And to celebrate, the company has delved into its century-long history and collaborated with a Swiss jewelry craftsman to create the limited edition Spirit of Switzerland, an ornately engraved writing instrument made to last for several lifetimes.