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Baume & Mercier Adds a GMT to Riviera

One of two new Baume & Mercier Riviera GMT models.

With its full-throttled release of new Riviera designs within the past few years, Baume & Mercier continues in 2023 to update one of its most-loved designs.

While the most recent Riviera update includes good-looking time-only, moon phase and skeleton models, this new GMT edition turned my head the quickest. Granted, the steel and titanium design came in a close second, but the new 42mm steel Riviera GMT model, offered in two color options, topped my list.

With its twelve-sided bezel and accompanying four screws, Riviera has managed to retain its casual elegance since its 1973 debut. When Baume & Mercier presented a fifth-generation Riviera collection in 2021, I was impressed.

But the new GMT upholds Riviera’s tacit invitation to travel (yes, to the French Riviera) with an actual dual-time function. Its central fourth hand rotates around the dial every 24 hours to indicate the time in the travel destination on the peripheral hour scale.

The GMT hand on the new design is as red as a sunburn on its namesake beach, and on either dial the second time zone is always highly visible. But this is especially true on the silver-dial edition, which also displays the 24-hour markers in matching red.

As noted, the two new Riviera GMT watches are available in two versions: one with a blue dial and a blue rubber strap and one with a silver dial and a steel bracelet. Both offer a tone-on-tone sun-satin finish and wave dial decor under a sapphire sapphire crystal with anti-glare coating on both sides. The GMT movement here is powered by an ETA-based caliber.

The watch’s octagonal crown of course displays Baume & Mercier’s Phi logo engraving in relief with a red line. Baume & Mercier’s own “Fast Strap” interchangeability system makes it a simple task to change from one strap style to another with no need for tools.

Prices: $3,200 (silver dial and steel bracelet) and $3,100 (blue dial with blue rubber strap). 

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The Watches

Hublot Adds New Colors to MP-09 Tourbillon Bi-Axis Universe

Hublot expands its collection of eccentric MP-09 Tourbillon Bi-Axis 5 Days Power Reserve watches with three new color options, all of which use carbon and composites to reproduce the glittering effect of colored gemstones.

Hublot adds three new color options to its MP-09 Tourbillon Bi-Axis 5 Days Power Reserve collection.

Three new hues, orange, violet and white, join earlier editions with bright colors created through a clever use of colorful composite and carbon fibers braided within strong, lightweight carbon mesh.

Hublot has previously offered other single-color 3-D Carbon versions of the MP-09 and even devised a rainbow edition late last year.

Essentially, Hublot technicians have braided the 49mm carbon case, combining thin bars of carbon and bars of colored composite together and threading them into a mass that, eventually, is milled into a case.

 

Hublot’s existing MP-09 tourbillon caliber (HUB9009.H1.RA.B), which debuted in 2017, is a manually wound movement with a five-day power reserve. The caliber’s impressive bi-axial tourbillon makes one complete rotation per minute for the first axis and a second rotation every thirty seconds for the second axis.

The unusual case shape for the MP-09 Tourbillon Bi-Axis 5 Days Power Reserve derives from Hublot’s choice to design the shape to best display the tourbillon’s double rotation. Hence, the case frames the tourbillon at 6 o’clock with unique undulations, curves and multi-level edges.

Hublot offers eight watches in each of the three new colors. Each watch is priced at $200,000. 

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The Watches

Reservoir and LabelNoir Celebrate Popeye

Reservoir introduces the Reservoir x LabelNoir x Popeye watch, the latest in the Franco-Swiss watchmaker’s lively series of partnership watches and the second with a cartoon character theme.

The Reservoir x LabelNoir Popeye watch.

In keeping with Reservoir’s specialized jump-hour displays, Popeye’s powerful right arm doubles as the watch’s minute hand, sweeping from “00” to “60” and then snapping back again at the start of each hour. The dial displays the hour digitally at the 6 o’clock position.

As the name implies, Reservoir teamed with Swiss-based watch customizer LabelNoir to created the limited-edition 41.5mm titanium watch. With its slightly curved lugs and knurled crown, the watch echoes Reservoir’s existing models, but here displays a new satin-finished grey DLC case courtesy of LabelNoir.

Reservoir’s dial features a 240° retrograde configuration, with the minutes displayed around three-fourths of the face. Reservoir artists create Popeye’s image with bright coloring on a grey background, accented by comic-style indices and a prominent hour window, all of which make for a fun, easy-to-read dial.

Reservoir fits the watch with Caliber RSV-240, the watchmaker’s latest update of its signature jump-hour movement. Introduced last year, the caliber is made in association with the Swiss manufacture TELOS.

The automatic caliber makes use of a La Joux-Perret LJP-G100 base with a proprietary 113-piece module. 

Reservoir signs the rotor and finishes it with Geneva stripes and radial style brushing. All this is visible through the sapphire caseback additionally adorned with a winking Popeye. Reservoir then protects the movement with fifty meters of water resistance.

The new Reservoir x LabelNoir x Popeye watch is available in a limited series of 200 pieces.

Each numbered model is presented in a decorated white wooden box and a special embroidery in honor of Popeye. A certificate of authenticity accompanies the box. 

Price: $4,450.

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The Watches

Parmigiani Fleurier Unveils a Red Rose Repeater  

With the new Rosa Mystica, Parmigiani Fleurier presents the latest addition to its stunning Roses Carrées collection of five unique minute repeaters decorated with Grand Feu enamel and intricate hand engraving.

The new Parmigiani Fleurier Rosa Mystica.

On the new watch you’ll find a red Grand Feu enamel dial, an engraved rose on the back and a bezel, the lugs and case band hand-engraved with the flowery La Rose Carrée motif. Parmigiani Fleurier underscores the red theme with a natural garnet cabochon on the 42mm 18-karat white gold case.

Like the blue-enamel La Rosa Celeste, which Parmigiani Fleurier launched in 2022, the Rosa Mystic is cased in a hinged hunter’s caseback that reveals a manually wound minute repeater caliber with cathedral gongs.

The chime has been optimized by a suspended movement, with the heel of the gongs physically connected to the case. In addition, watchmakers have redesigned the case to create resonance pockets and to lighten the white gold mass.

Parmigiani Fleurier has also devised an unusual ringing sequence for this movement that automatically skips dead time. For example, at 3:19, the three chimes for the hour are immediately followed by a double chime for the quarter-hour and again, without silence, by up to four chimes for the minute.

For the series, Parmigiani Fleurier has skeletonized the PF355 caliber (which recalls the PF361 caliber from 2016) with intricate curves and counter-curves, 114 inward and outward angles, and hand-applied beveling, polishing and surface treatments.

Price: Upon request. 

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Featured News

Franck Muller Wins Award in Japan  

Japanese Luxury men’s fashion magazine “Men’s Precious” earlier this year awarded Franck Muller its Watch Award 2022 for the Grand Central Tourbillon. 

The series of tonneau-shaped watches highlight a centrally placed tourbillon, which the judges recognized as a difficult technical feat.

“It requires considerable skill to place it (a tourbillon) in the center,” said Koichi Namiki, Professor of Toin University of Yokohama. “But it seems Franck Muller has placed it in a tonneau-shaped case, a first in the world of watches, so effortlessly. It is as if the tourbillon has been given the best possible stage.”

Franck Muller explained that its watchmakers did need to “totally rethink the watch in order to move the Tourbillon from its original position at 6 o’clock to the center of the watch.”

The watch features a self-winding movement, fully manufactured in-house and offering four days of power reserve via an eccentric micro rotor.

The Grand Central Tourbillon also features a domed crystal and a redesigned Cintrée Curvex case, where the sapphire crystal extends all the way to the bracelet to highlight the beauty of the dial.

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