The Ladies High-Mech category is for “women’s watches that are remarkable in terms of their mechanical creativity and complexity.” The key words here being “mechanical creativity and complexity.” Our panel believes there is going to be a landslide and for good reason: nothing holds a candle to a certain highly complicated timepiece created for ladies.
The watches in the Ladies category of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève can only feature two of the following functions at most: date, power reserve, classic moon phase, and a second time zone. The watches may be adorned with a maximum of 5 carats of gemstones.
According to a recent interview with CEO Jérôme Lambert at the company’s Hamburg headquarters, Montblanc’s watch business is humming along swimmingly. And an interesting statistic is that women constitute about 35 percent of the clients of this brand. Thus, it stands to perfect reason that the luxury brand boasting two Swiss factories producing elegant wristwatches would not forget women in its campaign to “share its passion for fine watchmaking.”
Let’s get one thing straight: Urwerk’s EMC Black is not a pretty watch and it’s not meant to be, it’s a proof-of-concept instrument. And a very good instrument at that, one that is not only extremely precise, but is the world’s first watch capable of measuring its own precision without external tools or meters.
Around 1995, the founder of the modern Urban Jürgensen & Sønner brand, Peter Baumberger (1940-2010), went into partnership with the then-independent movement manufacture Lémania to develop a minute repeater tourbillon movement. This project was finished in 2000; however, very few of these movements were ever made by Lémania, but Baumberger received three, each with different indications and finishes. One was a regulator.
To fly like a squirrel you need a wing suit and to soar like an eagle you need a parachute. But what about the technical aspects of the activities, e.g. keeping track of exactly how long that flight was? Well for for that there is nothing better than the Zenith El Primero Lightweight.
I love Richard Mille. Not the man (well, perhaps in a way), but his creations. I have loved the tonneau-shaped models from the moment I set eyes on them. They are masculine, sexy, beautifully proportioned, full of new technology goodness and unique in such a way that when you have one on your wrist, people instantly know what you are wearing. So why has brand ambassador Natalie Portman chosen a spider for the spotlight and how does it figure into the tourbillon and movement mechanics?
The date was March 2004. The place was Basel. I had gotten wind of a new “brand” and was heading down the street from Baselworld’s Hall 1 toward the local Starbucks to meet with the founders. In the ten years since that coffee-fueled day, Hautlence has basically experienced its own birth, middle age, near death and reincarnation. That’s quite a lot of history for any 10-year old brand. Read this story to find out where it is now and why Eric Cantona is the new “gentleman rebel” face.
In the world of complicated watchmaking, that which might appear simple when seen from the dial may often be quite complicated when you turn a watch over and peer into its depths.
In Kari Voutilainen’s case, not only does his style comprise an uncommon sort of complicated simplicity, it is also riddled with the thing that eludes many watchmakers: near perfection.
Glass can also be incredibly beautiful and breathtaking. Exhibit A: the Ikepod Hourglass by Marc Newson. Without glass we would have lost ships at sea; we would never have seen the wonders of space or the marvels of the microscopic. The Ikepod hourglass begins with a long tube of perfectly clear borosilicate glass and continues with so much more. Including nanoballs.