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Frederique Constant Upgrades Classics

Frederique Constant adds four handsome new dress watches to its accessibly priced Classics collection. Each model combines an elegant dark grey or silver-color dial with a new, customized G100 La Joux-Perret movement, all set in a wrist friendly 38.5mm steel or rose-gold-plated case.

One of the new Frederique Constant Classics Premiere models, each with a new automatic movement boasting an extended power reserve (68 hours).

Frederique Constant uses this Premiere addition to its Classics collection to feature the new automatic movements, which represent an upgrade from earlier Sellita or ETA-based calibers used in the Classics series.

Primarily, the new automatic movement offers a superior power reserve of sixty-eight hours, considerably higher than the thirty-eight-hour reserve typical of the standard Classics models.

Frederique Constant displays the new movement through a special open caseback set with a glassbox that magnifies the movement, showing off its Côtes de Genève finish.

On the dial, the watchmaker sets applied indexes around a mother-of-pearl, diamond-setting or a snailed dial decoration. The dials also feature Roman numerals, Breguet-style blue-tinted hands and a railroad-style minute circle.

Frederique Constant offers its Classics Premiere collection in four variations (plus one diamond-set gold model not sold in the United States). The plated rose gold version with sun-ray dial and embossed center (above) is a limited edition of 500 pieces ($2,095); the steel version with a silver dial or a dark grey dial is limited to 500 pieces each ($1,895) and the steel model with mother-of-pearl dial and diamonds is limited to 300 pieces ($2,295.)

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Citizen Launches New Automatic Collection 

Citizen brings its colorful, automatic NJ015 ‘Tsuyosa’ collection to the United States this month, broadening the watchmaker’s domestic mechanical offerings beyond its pricier automatic Series 8  and automatic dive models.

And with each watch priced at $450, the collection (which Citizen introduced in Europe and elsewhere last year) creates Citizen’s first entry level range of steel-cased automatic watches for the U.S. market. 

Citizen brings its much-touted NJ015 Automatic ‘Tsuyosa’ collection to the United States.

The new NJ015 collection, called Tsuyosa, (Japanese for ‘strength’) is powered by Citizen’s Caliber 8210, an automatic movement with a 21,600 vph frequency and a forty-hour power reserve.

Citizen also opens up a view into the movement on each watch through a clear sapphire caseback.

Citizen is offering Tsuyosa in five sun-ray pattern dial options, including blue, yellow, green, turquoise and black, each displaying time with baton-
style indexes.

The watches even offer a magnifying date lens, which is a feature rarely seen on watches in this price range.

These are everyday-wear models. Each arrives with a moderately slim 40mm by 11.7mm brush-finished steel cases and integrated steel bracelet.

Citizen polishes the bracelet’s center links to add a bit of luxury to the contemporary styled Tsuyosa.

Price: $450.

 

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Blancpain Expands Ladybird With New Colors and Functions 

Blancpain adds small seconds and moon phase functions to its Ladybird collection of jeweled watches. Dubbed Ladybird Colors, the collection offers new hues as well, with models sporting summer-ready midnight blue, peacock green, forest green, lilac or turquoise numerals on textured mother-of-pearl dials.

One of two new models in the new Blancpain Ladybird Colors collection. A second model features a small seconds display.

In addition to their new, colorful dials, each Ladybird Colors watch is set with seventy diamonds on the bezel and lugs.

Offered in either red gold or white gold 34.9mm cases, each watch in the series offers leather straps colored to match the new dial accents.

Note that the numerals on the Ladybird Colors dials are asymmetrical, a style also seen on the tapering diamond-setting around the small seconds and moon-phase indicators.

As these are Blancpain watches, all are powered by a mechanical movement, namely automatic Calibre 1163 for the small seconds version and automatic Calibre 1163L for the moon-phase model.

The caseback of the green Ladybird Colors Small Seconds in a red gold case, showing automatic Caliber 1163, with its open-work rotor.

Each movement offers a four-day power reserve and a silicon balance spring. 

Blancpain nicely finishes the movement, including an open-work gold oscillating weight in the gold color that matches case metal. 

Prices: $34,100 (moon phase) and $32,000 (small seconds). 

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Louis Vuitton Launches Open-Worked Voyager 

Louis Vuitton introduces its first time-only skeleton movement, LV60, and places it into its proprietary, modified cushion-shaped Voyager case to create the Voyager Skeleton, a limited edition, platinum-cased work of eye-catching horological architecture.

The new Louis Vuitton Voyager Skeleton.

No stranger to open-worked movements (see, for example, its Tambour Curve Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève or the Voyager Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève), Louis Vuitton uses this new model to explore a horologically less complex Voyager.

This approach allows the watchmakers at  La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton (in collaboration with Neuchâtel-based workshop Le Cercle des Horlogers) to focus on the Voyager’s architectural case and dynamic bridgework.

In fact, Louis Vuitton explains that its designers were inspired by the architecture of the Frank Gehry-designed Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris when creating the skeletal Voyager.  

Like the Foundation building, the Voyager’s movement offers a minimalist approach to its structure. The Voyager’s watchmakers have carefully trimmed excess bridges and plates, constructing only the minimum required for the movement’s internal integrity.

Fortunately, this approach was taken with a keen sense of design, so that, for example, the watch’s LV-shaped bridges are actually geometric lines. Even the rotor is designed with flair — its bridge features a Louis Vuitton monogram while the barrel ratchet wheel is open-worked to spell the brand name itself.

The watch’s almost monochrome hue is created by the rhodium-plated components, which Louis Vuitton frames with a blue minutes ring. Matching blue hands add legibility. An off-center micro-rotor, which winds the mainspring bidirectionally, offers a clear view of the movement from either side of the watch.  

In another ode to transparency, Louis Vuitton has opened the mainspring barrel so that it can serve as a power reserve indicator. A tightly-coiled mainspring indicates full wind while loosely-arranged coils remind the wearer to wind the watch.

The Louis Vuitton Voyager Skeleton is available as a limited edition of 150 pieces. 

Price: $55,000. 

 

Specifications: Louis Vuitton Voyager Skeleton

Case: 41mm by 43.7mm by 9mm platinum case with satin-finished sides and a polished top, sapphire glass, blue snailed minute ring. 50-meters of water resistance, ‘Limited edition’ engraved case-back, with sapphire glass.

Movement: Self-winding mechanical skeleton manufacture movement, Caliber LV60, designed & developed by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. Tungsten micro-rotor decorated with a white gold, rhodium-plated plate. Frequency 28,800 vph with 48-hour power reserve.

Bracelet: Two straps: navy blue, alligator leather strap and calf leather strap with platinum buckle. 

Price: $55,000.

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Porsche Design Celebrates the Rennsport Reunion 

To celebrate the upcoming Porsche Rennsport Reunion, slated to begin later this year (on September 28) at Leguna Seca in California, Porsche Design launches a U.S. limited edition watch: the Chronograph 1 – Rennsport Reunion 7 Edition.

The new Porsche Design the Chronograph 1 – Rennsport Reunion 7 Edition.

As an enhanced edition of the famed Porsche Design Chronograph 1 from 1972, the watch retains the original’s pioneering black livery. But instead of the original’s PVD steel case, the new models are forged using a more scratch-resistant titanium carbide case. But the revived watch still enthralls with same matte black dial, red chronograph seconds hand and 41mm case size as the original.

For this special edition, Porsche Design engraves a ‘7’ on the strap to celebrate the seventh Porsche Rennsport Reunion. 

Turn the watch over to see more commemorative markings, including a platinum-colored winding rotor in the form of the RS Spyder wheel rim with a colorful Porsche Crest (used exclusively for this edition). The rotor winds the superb COSC-certified Porsche Design caliber WERK 01.140.

Porsche Design offers customers two bracelets with this commemorative watch. Buyers receive a classic black titanium bracelet and the sporty black leather strap with stitching and Race-Tex in blue (and the embossed “7”). Porsche Design makes its strap materials from originals used in the interiors of Porsche sports cars.

The Porsche Design Chronograph 1 – Rennsport Reunion 7 Edition is priced at $12,500 and is limited to seventy-five pieces in celebration of 75th anniversary of Porsche. 

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