Nomos launches four square-cased Tetra watches with automatic calibers and shiny, enamel-like dials.
The new Nomos Tetra Neomatik – 175 Years Watchmaking Glashütte Blue.
The new watches, called Tetra Neomatik – 175 Years Watchmaking Glashütte, retain Tetra’s well-known shape and the Tetra Neomatik’s existing 39mm diameter and automatic DUW 3001 caliber, but reveal four crisp dial colors.
Nomos explains that the red, blue, black and off-white dial colors here are lacquer-coated using a technique similar to that used when making enamel dials. Incoming light is not absorbed by the opaque surfaces but instead reflected, creating depth, according to the watchmaker.
Incoming light is not absorbed by the opaque surface but instead reflected. Pictured is the new Nomos Tetra Neomatik red.
Recognizing the decidedly unsubtle dial hues, Nomos says the new watches “are not for everyone.” The few Existing Tetra Neomatik watches are available in more subdued silver, blue or white dials.
The Tetra is a signature Nomos collection primarily offered only with a manual-wind caliber.
“The watches are bolder than sneakers with a jacket,” according to Nomos product manager Heike Ahrendt.
The automatic DUW 3001 caliber, visible through the sapphire crystal glass back, is regulated according to chronometer values.
The chronometer-adjusted Nomos DUW 3001 automatic caliber is visible through a sapphire caseback on each watch, framed by an engraving noting the limited nature of the Tetra Neomatik – 175 Years Watchmaking Glashütte collection. The new series is limited to 175 units of each color.
Nomos attaches each case to a remborde strap made of Horween Genuine Shell Cordovan, oiled by hand and struck with glass balls to create a shiny finish. Price: $3,860.
Porsche Design revisits its Chronograph 1 – 1972 Limited Edition from earlier this year with the new Chronograph 1 All Black Numbered edition, an all-black titanium version of the historic design, to be issued as an individually numbered limited edition of 1,000.
Porsche Design’s new Chronograph 1—1972 All Black Numbered Edition
Like the previous model, which sold out quickly in early 2022, the new 40.8mm matte black titanium edition also echoes the original 1972 model’s size and design.
For both watches Porsche Design references its Chronograph 1, long considered the first all-black watch. The company’s use of black PVD on steel (as well as employing the then-new Valjoux 7750 automatic movement) set an example emulated for decades afterwards by sports watchmakers across the globe. Early examples of the pioneering Porsche Design automatic chronograph are highly collectible.
This newest version differs from the earlier model not only due to its individual number, but also because it features a clear sapphire caseback. That’s where you’ll see the watch’s number and a clear view of the Porsche Design WERK 01.140 caliber with COSC certification and the Porsche Design Icon winding rotor.
From the back you’ll see the watch’s number and a clear view of the Porsche Design WERK 01.140 caliber with COSC certification and the Porsche Design Icon winding rotor.
The remaining specifications echo the earlier edition, notably the highly legible dial inspired by the dashboard in the Porsche 911. Its tachymeter and the day/date display use the current Porsche font while the minute hand revisits F. A. Porsche’s own tapered design.
Porsche Design will make the watch’s 40.8mm case and bracelet with the same high performance titanium it uses in nearly all Porsche Design timepieces today. And new SuperLuminova will enhance the watch’s visibility in the dark. All Porsche Design Timepieces are produced in-house at Porsche Design Timepieces AG, the brand’s own timepiece-manufacturing facility in Solothurn, Switzerland.
Each watch arrives on a black titanium detachable bracelet with minutely adjustable folding clasp.
Porsche Design’s new Chronograph 1—1972 All Black Numbered Edition is set for release later in 2022 but can now be pre-ordered on the Porsche Design site as well as in Porsche Design Stores and from selected watch retailers. Price: $10,500.
The new Porsche Design Chronograph 911 Sport Classic, available to Porsche owners.
New 911 Sport
Porsche Design has also launched a new retro-inspired model, the Chronograph 911 Sport Classic, to owners of the recently released Porsche 911 Sport Classic.
The watch features a two-tone titanium and black case while the dial, white hands, green digits, and scale markings are inspired by the automaker’s Heritage Design tachometer. The design of the 360-degree winding rotor is based on the wheel options available for the 911 Sport Classic. And for the first time, Porsche Design is offering a range of different dials for the timepiece. Price: 12,500 euros.
All week we’re reviewing 2022 debuts presented during Watches and Wonders 2022 that, perhaps, you didn’t read too much about in the first wave of online reporting.
With a trio of glorious chiming watches and a terrific flying tourbillon model highlighting Chopard’s 2022 Watches and Wonders debuts, it’s no wonder this handsome limited edition might have garnered less attention than it deserves.
Chopard’s L.U.C XPS 1860 Officer.
With a gold 40mm case, a forest green guilloché gold dial and a hinged officer-type back cover, the new L.U.C XPS 1860 Officer, which bears the Poinçon de Genève quality hallmark, is both distinctive and elegant.
Much of its distinction lies within its gold case. Inside Chopard has placed its celebrated ultra-thin (3.30mm) L.U.C 96.01-L movement, which is the first Chopard Manufacture caliber from 1997.
Built with Chopard Twin technology and a 22-karat gold micro-rotor, the movement supplies two stacked barrels that guarantee a 65-hour power reserve and confer chronometer-certified precision. All L.U.C models with a small seconds display are certified by the Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute (COSC).
As noted, the watch’s forest green dial is built on a solid gold base. In the center you’ll find a hand-guilloché honeycomb motif that also adorns the back cover. Until the 1920s, Chopard engraved all its watch movements and covers with this beehive and bees to symbolize industry.
The bees appear in random manner, which means each watch engraving is slightly different from another. Chopard reprised the bee symbol at the advent of the L.U.C collection in 1996.
Leading with a newly designed Travel Time watch that now includes an annual calendar, Patek Philippe at Watches and Wonders 2022 debuted twelve new watches, including three models designed with a feminine focus.
The new Patek Philippe new Ref. 5326G-001 Annual Calendar Travel Time.
But first, another debut
Perhaps to give the new Annual Calendar Travel Time its own spotlight, Patek Philippe waited until just after the Geneva show to launch a splashier technical innovation: the new 41mm platinum-cased Patek Philippe Ref. 5470P-001, a 1/10-of-a-second monopusher chronograph.
Patek Philippe Ref. 5470P-001, a 1/10-of-a-second monopusher chronograph.
To engineer its first high-frequency chronograph Patek Philippe started with its existing CH 29- 535 PS caliber from 2009. Watchmakers amped the frequency from 4 Hz to 5 Hz (36,000 vibrations per hour, or ten steps per second) and then equipped the movement with an additional 1/10th of a second chronograph mechanism.
As Patek Philippe explains, the designers provided the caliber CH 29-535 PS 1/10 with two independent and synchronized chronograph mechanisms, each of them driving a different central hand. The hand that performs a complete revolution per minute shows the stopped seconds in the traditional manner. The other hand (in red lacquered Silinvar) performs one revolution per twelve seconds.
We’ll have more details about the new Cal. 5470P in a future post. For details and a video, see the Patek Philippe website.
Travel time
The totally new Ref. 5326G-001 Annual Calendar Travel Time arrives in a new 41mm white gold Calatrava case with a terrific hobnailed case-side treatment meant to recall the hobnail bezels that have long characterized Patek Philippe’s traditional Calatrava collection.
The watch will also draw stares to its light-refracting textured charcoal gray dial that darkens to black toward its minute track. Vintage-styled applied numerals and white gold hour and minute hands are coated with an equally retro beige luminescence.
(This same dial, case, hand and marker layout is also found on another 2022 debut, the less complex Cal. 5226G, a three-hand 40mm white gold Calatrava with date–see below.)
The new Cal. 5226G, a three-hand 40mm white gold Calatrava with date, sports the same dial treatment as the new Annual Calendar Travel Time.
Patek Philippe’s watchmakers designed a new self-winding caliber (new 31-260 PS QA LU FUS 24H) for the new Annual Calendar Travel Time in which the Travel Time mechanism controls the Annual Calendar.
A view of Caliber 31-260 PS QA LU FUS 24H from the case back of the new Annual Calendar Travel Time.
The unusual setup, in which the watch’s date display is synchronized with local time, allows forwards and backwards date correction.
And to better retain the dressy Calatrava style, Patek Philippe resisted the need to install two pushers to control the two hour hands (a solid hand for local time and a skeletonized hand for home time). Instead, the wearer can correct the local time via the crown. Calendar indications can be adjusted via small case-side correctors located near their respective functions: day at 10, month at 2, date at 4 and moon phases at 8 o’clock.
For this debut, Patek Philippe also updated its legendary Annual Calendar, which the brand essentially invented for the wristwatch in 1996.And, Patek Philippe’s engineers shortened the Annual Calendar’s changeover time. Thanks to a new cam system, the changing dates and move to local time is five times faster (eighteen minutes) than the same actions in earlier annual calendars.
This change is among many that Patek Philippe has cited in eight patent applications for the new caliber.
Patek Philippe delivers its Ref. 5326G-001 Annual Calendar Travel Time with two interchangeable straps, one beige calfskin with nubuck texture. The second black calfskin strap has embossed textile finish and beige decorative stitching. Price: $76,882.
Additional highlights among the twelve 2022 Watches and Wonders debuts for Patek Philippe include:
Patek Philippe Ref. 5320G-011.
Cal. 5320G-011 Perpetual Calendar, an eye-catching new version of the contemporary vintage Patek Philippe perpetual calendar in 40mm white gold with a stunning rose-gilt opaline dial. With its three-tiered lugs, this debut recalls a Patek Philippe model from 1945. Price: $94,624.
Patek Philippe Ref. 5172G-010.
Cal. 5172G-010 Chronograph, a new version of the manually wound Manufacture chronograph in 40mm white gold, also features a rose-gilt opaline dial (above). You might recall this model from 2019 with a blue dial. $80,431.
Patek Philippe also added a trio of olive green-dialed models and one green lacquered watch during Watches and Wonders 2022.
We’ll have more reporting about the remaining Patek Philippe 2022 debuts in future posts. These debuts include several artisanal updates to the firm’s Worldtimer plus new gem set options for the platinum-cased Ref. 5374/300P Grand Complication with a minute repeater and a perpetual calendar and the Ref. 7121 Ladies’ Moon Phases watch.
Chopard adds the first complication to its Alpine Eagle collection with the new Alpine Eagle Flying Tourbillon, the watchmaker’s highlight debut from Watches & Wonders 2022.
The 41mm steel watch, with a high-frequency (25,200 vph) flying tourbillon, also dips the sporty Alpine Eagle collection into the luxury category, as it is Chopard’s first complication watch bearing the Geneva Seal quality hallmark.
The Chopard Alpine Eagle Flying Tourbillon, new at Watches & Wonders 2022.
Chopard builds the watch’s flying tourbillon without an upper bridge, which gives the regulating component its ‘flying’ moniker. That transparency in this L.U.C 96.24-L movement is based on the development of Chopard Manufacture’s first caliber (L.U.C 96.01-L from 1997). Like that caliber, the new movement also thin, measuring 3.3mm.
Thanks to this internal thinness, Chopard also built a thinner case than is typically found within the Alpine Eagle collection. The case on his new model measures 8mm thick, with a thinner bezel and lug set when compared to a classic Alpine Eagle Large model.
Chopard also equipped this new movement with a stop-seconds function that is backed up with a chronometer certification by the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute. (Note the “Chronometer” inscription on the dial below the logo.)
This double certification (COSC and Geneva Seal) places the Chopard Alpine Eagle Flying Tourbillon alone on the market (according to Chopard) as the only flying tourbillon watch receive both certifications.
The impressive new Chopard caliber L.U.C 96.24-L earns Geneva Seal and COSC certifications.
The Chopard L.U.C caliber, like so many of Chopard’s excellent in-house movements, offers a much-welcomed long power reserve of sixty-five hours thanks to its two stacked barrels based on Chopard Twin technology.
While Chopard has embedded unique characteristics into the new watch, the Alpine Eagle Flying Tourbillon still echoes all the Alpine Eagle collection’s overall profile, including a round case with stylized sides, a crown engraved with the compass rose, a bezel with eight functional screws set at a tangent, a stamped dial featuring a deep color (here textured blue on a gold base), luminescent indications, and a proprietary Lucent Steel A233 bracelet and case.
Price: Upon request.
Also new from Chopard at Watches & Wonders 2022
The Chopard Happy Sport Chrono, a 40mm COSC-certified automatic chronograph with an ethical 18-karat rose gold case, and gold dial hosting seven ‘dancing’ diamonds. Price: $28,600.
The Chopard Happy Sport 33 mm, an ethical rose gold (case and bracelet) three-hand watch with five ‘dancing’ diamonds spinning around its gilded satin-brushed dial. Price: $29,700.
The bees appear in random manner, which means each watch engraving is slightly different from another. Chopard reprised the bee symbol at the advent of the L.U.C collection in 1996.
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