when watch manufacturers compete in inventiveness – L’Express

“Audacity is first of all having the courage to defend an idea.” For Gianfranco Ritschel, watchmaking expert and trainer, it is about daring to “break the codes, even if recognition is not systematically there”.

As soon as a watchmaking firm seeks to distinguish itself, two options are available to it: imagine an original aesthetic or push the limits of technique. Some go so far as to bet on both tables, like Louis Vuitton with its Haute Horlogerie piece Tambour Moon Saphir Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève Frank Gehry. The name of this reference alone already contains the main distinctive characteristics of this extraordinary watch, whose movement, equipped with a skeleton flying tourbillon, is fully revealed through the transparency of a sapphire case. As for the design, it is the result of the collaboration between Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton and the famous architect Frank Gehry. He wanted to transcribe in miniature the movements of boat sails and the perspective effects that he had created for the Maison Louis Vuitton in Seoul and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. All this, in a block of sapphire where the case, crown, horns, hands and, above all, the ultra-thin dial which incorporates the reliefs of Frank Gehry’s architectural works have been sculpted and required two hundred and fifty hours of work.

It is also the sapphire that Hublot’s Big Bang MP-11 puts in the spotlight, in a unique light blue. While the Chanel watch design studio opted for a pink sapphire on the case and bracelet of the J12 X-Ray Edition Rose watch. The choice of the FP Journe manufacture fell on a completely different material, multi-colored ceramic glass, to set the bezel of the Elegante Gino’s Dream watch with 52 baguette-cut stones, dressed in the hues of the rainbow in tribute to Serge Cukrowicz, co-founder of Montres Journe SA. In a nod to its television-inspired case, Mido had the idea of ​​transposing the test pattern from the 1970s onto the dial of the Multifort TV Big Date S01E1 limited edition. Just as colorful but in pastel tones, the Type 1° M watch from Ressence has a polychrome dial where the rotating discs indicate hours, minutes, seconds and days of the week. With its Réflection collection, Cartier pushes the stylistic approach by playing on the very shape of the timepiece: a large open gold band where, at both ends, the dial is reflected in the mirror polish of the precious metal.

Audacity sometimes pushes watchmakers to push the boundaries of mechanical engineering. In the ultra-flat category, two manufacturers have been challenging each other for some time. Piaget has succeeded in housing the caliber and, for the first time, an annular tourbillon in the Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon, and this in two millimeters of thickness! For its part, Bulgari unveiled the world’s thinnest mechanical watch with COSC chronometer, the Octo Finissimo Ultra and its… 1.70 millimeters.

Some leading technological advances were also presented in Geneva during the Watches and Wonders Show in April. Like Patek Philippe’s World Time reference 5330G-001, with the date display indexed to local time – a patented world first. Or, at IWC, the Portugieser Eternal Calendar, the first secular perpetual calendar. The watch takes into account the complex rules of the Gregorian calendar for leap years up to 3999 and its moon phase display is so precise that it will take… 45 million years before it needs to be adjusted. As for the Vacheron Constantin manufacture, already the record holder for the number of complications on a timepiece, it has gone even further with Les Cabinotiers The Berkley Grand Complication: 2,877 pieces and above all, 63 complications. Without a doubt, the most complex watch in the world.