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Frederique Constant celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary and the fifteenth anniversary of its Manufacture tourbillon with a limited-edition version of its Manufacture Highlife Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar.

The new Frederique Constant Manufacture Highlife Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar.

The Geneva-based watchmaker will release thirty-five examples of the new 41mm by 12.65mm pink gold watch. 

With a contemporary design, the watch melds both of its namesake technical complications within a blue dial, carefully adapting the upper half the tourbillon aperture to fit alongside the calendar displays.

This shape differs from the classically round aperture found within the watchmaker’s existing tourbillon models. 

On the dial you’ll find the day, date and month indications at the 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions. Each shows its indication with a hand, though the month/years display (at the 12 o’clock position) requires two hands. In addition to the month hand, another hand indicates leap years.

Frederique Constant’s characteristic Highlife globe pattern subtly underpins the watch’s dial, complete with map-like meridians and parallels. Each dial sector is finished slightly differently in either satin or sunburst patterns to enhance readability.

Frederique Constant’s own tourbillon regulator is fit with the watch’s seconds hand, which rotates just above the balance wheel, a series of blued screws and a gold-finished baseplate. Artisans engrave each plate with the watch’s individual serial number.

The movement here is Frederique Constant’s own FC-975 Manufacture caliber, which the watchmaker decorates with circular grained and Côtes de Genève finishes. The movement boasts a 38-hour power reserve and water resistance to 30 meters. 

Frederique Constant supplies the watch with interchangeable leather and rubber straps, allowing its owner to easily switch between traditional and sportier  looks. 

Price: $48,995. 

Specifications: Frederique Constant Highlife Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar Manufacture 

(Limited to 35 pieces, available in January)

Movement: FC-975 in-house automatic caliber, perpetual calendar, tourbillon, 38-hour power reserve, 28,800 alt/h. 

Case: 41mm by 12.65mm brushed and polished rose gold three-part with
scratch-resistant and anti-reflective convex sapphire crystal. See-through case back. Water-resistant to 30 meters. 

Dial: Blue with matte finishing and globe pattern embossed in the center, rose gold plated applied indexes filled with white luminous treatment, rose-gold-plated hour and minute hands filled with white luminous treatment, date counter with rose-gold-plated hand. Heart Beat opening at 6 o’clock with 60-seconds tourbillon, rose-gold-plated seconds hand, day counter at 9 o’clock with rose-gold-plated hand. Month and (leap) year counter at 12 o’clock with rose gold plated hands. 

Strap: Navy blue alligator leather with nubuck finishing. Also included: additional navy blue rubber strap. 

Price: $48,995.

Citizen marks its ongoing partnership with ispace’s Hakuto-R space program with a new Attesa Eco-Drive watch encased in 42mm of Super Titanium, which Hakuto-R also uses on the legs of the project’s lunar lander.

The latest Citizen Attesa Hakuto-R Collaboration includes a galaxy-styled dial.

Citizen then treats the case and the matching Super Titanium bracelet with Duratect DLC to both darken and protect them.  

The glittery dial on the new Attesa underscores the watch’s galactic theme. Citizen has devised a beautiful purple and blue hue, which it created from recycled polycarbonate printed with structural color ink developed by the FujiFilm Corporation.

The dial reflects and refracts light and features silvery accents that echo the look of glittering stars and nebulae.

To emphasize the limited edition nature of the watch, Citizen engraves the Hakuto-R logo on the back of the all-black case back.

As the Citizen Attesa Hakuto-R is a radio-controlled watch powered by light, it is among the most user friendly analog world timer/perpetual calendars available. Adding to that ease is Citizen’s “Direct Flight,” a name for the easy adjustment of the time and date in twenty-six times zones with just a turn of the crown. 

Citizen will make 2,700 Attesa Hakuto-R Collaboration watches, each priced at $1,495.

    A. Lange & Söhne surprised many earlier this summer when it introduced new colors to two of its best-known complicated models.

    The Glashütte-based manufacturer applied a platinum case to its famed Lange 1 Time Zone while also adding a stunning pink gold dial to its 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar in a white gold case. 

    Here, we’ll look at the latter model with its visually transformative new dial hue.

    The newest A. Lange & Söhne 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar, now in a white gold case with a pink gold dial.

     

    The 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar’s dimensions, movement and technical details remain as impressive they were when the piece debuted ten years ago when it won the Grand Complications award at the 2013 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie in Geneva.

    We’ve seen the dial color and case metal combination here previously when the watchmaker offered the design on its Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon (2019) and its Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar (2021).

    The look is almost vintage, especially when eyeing the dial’s very traditional railway minute scale and its classical four-subdial layout.

    And this make perfect sense since A. Lange & Söhne designers meant to recall the dials of earlier Lange pocket watches. Thus, we see the combined calendar at the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions while the left subsidiary dial shows the date and day of the week and the right displays the month and leap year.

    At the same time, we see the expressive moon phase display within the subsidiary seconds display at 6 o’clock and the minute counter and power-reserve indicator at the top of the dial.

    The beautiful display continues on the back of the watch with a clear view of the watchmaker’s spectacular manual-wind L101.1 movement with its clearly visible rattrapante mechanism and superior finishing. Stunning.

    A.Lange & Sohne will make 100 examples of the new 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar. 

    Price on Request.

    The Calatrava Reference 5224R-001, the headliner among the seventeen new watches unveiled by Patek Philippe during Watches and Wonders 2023, scores high for legibility, ease of use and originality.

    New Ref. 5224R is a Calatrava model equipped with the Travel Time dual time zone function and a 24-hour display.

    Arriving amid a strong set of debuts, including a highly jeweled Grandmaster Chime and the first annual calendar within the Aquanaut Luce collection (to be covered in upcoming posts), this newest adaptation of Patek Philippe’s Travel Time dual-time display is paired with an original display of local time and home time via two center hands turning on a 24-hour circle.

     

    Patek Philippe has used similar 24-hour displays, but most have been seen on watches from the distant past. In the early twentieth century Patek Philippe made a series of Chronometro Gondolo watches for the Brazilian retailer Gondolo & Labouriau.

     

    But for the new watch, Patek Philippe flipped the original design. Instead of placing the noontime indication at the more traditional 6 o’clock position, Patek Philippe opts to update (and, to many, simplify) the display by placing noon at the top of the dial where, it seems, more wearers look when checking the time.

     

    In another nod to simplicity and aesthetics, Patek Philippe has also replaced the traditional in-case correction pushers for local time with a new patented correction system that allows the user to pull out the crown.

     

    When pulled out to the intermediate position, the local time can be adjusted backwards and forwards in one-hour increments. 

    To accomplish these new features, Patek Philippe built new caliber 31-260 PS FUS 24H. The movement is an update to Patek Philippe’s 31-260 ultra-thin self-winding base caliber from 2011, which here includes a 24-hour mechanism and a Travel Time mechanism.

     

    In 2021, Patek Philippe further enhanced the initial caliber (then placed into the In-Line Perpetual Calendar Reference 5236P-001) with a new operating frequency of 4 Hz, a twenty per cent increase in barrel-spring torque, a mini-rotor in platinum and a reduction wheel that uncouples the self-winding mechanism when the watch is being manually wound.

    The watch’s 42mm rose-gold case nicely complements a sharp-looking blue dial that Patek Philippe has set with contemporary, high-relief rose gold numerals, hour markers and five-minute cabochons.

     

    The watch is also notable for its generous use of luminous material within the rose-gold, syringe-type hands, the hour markers and the numerals.   

    Price: $57,366. 

    More New in 2023

    As noted above, Patek Philippe for 2023 adds an annual calendar to the Aquanaut Luce to create Annual Calendar Reference 5261R-001 ($61,506), the first annual calendar in the Aquanaut collection.

     Aquanaut Luce Annual Calendar Reference 5261R-001.

    Finished with a very nice blue-gray dial and attached to a matching strap, the 39.9mm rose gold watch enriches Patek Philippe’s range of complicated ladies’ watches.

    Also for 2023, Patek Philippe adds a blue-gray sunburst dial and a navy-blue grained calfskin strap to its distinctive Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Chronograph Reference 5924G-001 ($75,699) and adds a khaki green lacquered dial to the Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Chronograph Reference 5924G-010 ($79,699).

    Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Chronograph Reference 5924G-001.
    Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Chronograph, Reference 5924G-010.

    Patek Philippe also updates its Calatrava references 6007G-001, 6007G-010 and 6007G-011 with a new modern dial style featuring black dials and three types of finish with an embossed carbon pattern.

    Calatrava reference 6007G-001, one of three colorful updates to the series.

    Each also receives new color accents in on their respective dials and straps: yellow (6007G-001), red (6007G-010) or sky blue (6007G-011). Each is priced at $37,850.

    Patek Philippe also expanded its range of watches for women with the new Calatrava self-winding Reference 4997/200R-001, a rose gold, diamond-set watch ($38,441) now sporting a rich purple wave dial pattern created by fifty layers of translucent lacquer.

     

    Pictures don’t do this dial justice as the lacquer finish here is extraordinary.

    We’ll discuss additional Patek Philippe 2023 debuts in upcoming posts. 

    One year after debuting the world premiere Tonda PF GMT Rattrapante, Parmigiani Fleurier this year follows up with another premiere jumping hand watch, the Tonda PF Minute Rattrapante.

    The new Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF Minute Rattrapante.

    The new watch echoes last year’s GMT by performing a classic timing function with a new, simpler operation. Where that earlier model allowed for a hand-based display of GMT time, the new watch allows the user to check elapsed minutes on-demand via a second minute hand hidden directly under the primary minute hand.

    Instead of turning a calibrated bezel (as on a dive watch), the user simply presses a pusher to move the second, gold hour hand to the desired time.

    With the Tonda PF Minute Rattrapante, it’s the movement’s control of the second minute hand that performs the elapsed time display, not the user’s bezel-read calculation. The elapsed time is indicated when the primary minute hand reaches – and covers – the gold minute hand.

    This display can be used for any fine calibration of the minutes over a specific period of time, or for any occasion or event requiring measurement of the minutes count, such as for cooking times or game times.

    To use the function, the wearer can move the rose gold hand in either five-minute increments (via the pusher at 8’o’clock) or one-minute increments (via the pusher positioned at 10 o’clock). Once the two hands meet and superimpose, the period of time to be measured will have elapsed.

    At any time, the wearer can return the gold hand to its position hidden underneath the rhodium-plated primary minute hand by pressing the crown-integrated pusher, in a similar way to the split-seconds function. 

    As on last year’s Tonda PF GMT Rattrapante, this new hand-based time counting function is only visible when activated.

    The movement that makes these functions possible, new caliber PF 052, is powered by an elegant rose-gold micro-rotor and is fully visible from the back of the 40mm steel case.  

    The functionality here is of course paired with the watchmaker’s high-end workmanship and finishing. These include a hand-cut Grain d’Orge guilloché dial in a sand grey color and 18-karat gold hands and markers. As on all Tonda PF models, the knurled bezel is platinum.

    The new Tonda PF Minute Rattrapante is a welcome, ingenious addition to Parmigiani Fleurier’s new series of hand-based complication displays.

    Price: $30,600. 

    Also new in 2023

    In addition to the headliner Tonda PF Minute Rattrapante, Parmigiani Fleurier debuts a platinum-cased Tonda PF Flying Tourbillon with a stunning Milano blue dial ($163,700), a premiere all-platinum Tonda PF Microrotor model with time and date only ($92,800), and a trio of perpetual models displaying time using the Islamic, Chinese and Gregorian calendars.

    The new Tonda PF Flying Tourbillon.
    The new all-platinum Tonda PF Microrotor.

    The watchmaker also adds a rose-gold edition of last year’s premiere PF GMT Rattrapante, complete with a rich Grain d’Orge guilloché dial in Milano blue,($65,500) plus a rose-gold edition of its always impressive Tonda PF Split-Seconds Chronograph ($169,100).

    A new rose-gold edition of last year’s premiere Tonda PF GMT Rattrapante.
    The Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF Split-Seconds Chronograph, now in rose gold.

    We’ll have more about the debuts in future posts.