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The Watches

Chopard Commemorates the California Mille 

The annual California Mille classic car rally ran in late April with Chopard again (for the fifth time) as the rally’s Official Timer. In addition to its timing duties, the Swiss watchmaker has launched a commemorative watch to mark the 2023 event: The Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille 32nd Edition, a 44mm Lucent Steel certified chronometer dressed in grey with Hagerty Motorsports black and blue racing stripes.

The Chopard Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille 32nd Edition.

As is typical of Chopard’s always notable racing-themed chronographs, the dial on this latest example is meant to recall the dashboard of a classic car. Thus, you’ll see the bright red accents on the California Mille logo and the tip of central sweep-seconds hand contrasting nicely with the grey dial and the racing stripes.

Additional racing themed designs are seen around the dial, with the watch’s thin black bezel displaying a tachymeter scale with contrasting white graduations that can be used to measure average speed ranging from 60 to 400 km/h by means of the chronograph seconds hand.

Inside, Chopard provides an COSC-certified ETA Valjoux-based automatic caliber with a 48-hour power reserve. Sturdy mushroom-type pushers are knurled on top to assist with a grip while in use. Likewise, Chopard adds a large crown with a ratcheted edge to ensure a good grip.

Finally, the Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille 32nd Edition timepiece is fitted with a black calfskin strap lined with rubber. In keeping with the codes established at the birth of the Mille Miglia collection, the lining is patterned like the tread of 1960s Dunlop Racing tires.

Chopard offers its Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille 32nd Edition as a limited edition of thirty pieces. 

Price: $8,500.

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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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Hublot Partners with Nespresso to Brew Eco-Themed Big Bang 

Hublot teams with Nespresso to create a green-hued, environmentally friendly Big Bang watch made using recycled Nespresso capsules and coffee grounds.

The new Hublot Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin.

The new Hublot Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin is a 42mm limited edition watch with a case, crown, bezel, and pushers made from recycled aluminum. The watch’s caseback and movement container are both made from recycled titanium.

The watch unites two Swiss consumer brands in the latest project in Nespresso’s Second Life campaign, in which the company teams with Swiss brands to create new products from used aluminum coffee capsules.

In addition to using recycled metals, the project also includes a wholly new application for used coffee grounds. In a world first, Hublot and Nespresso have transformed used coffee grounds into watch straps.

The Hublot-Nespresso collaboration is signaled by Nespresso’s “N” engraved on the crown.

For the fabric strap, one of the two straps included with the watch, Hublot collaborated with SingTex, a Nespresso partner. The fabric strap, called Scafé, is 100% recycled fabric made using 5% coffee grounds and 95% recycled polyester. Hublot colors the fabric strap green to match the case and  then adds a recycled aluminum cap to the strap’s titanium buckle.

The watch, pictured with fabric strap.

Coffee grounds are even added to the rubber strap, which is composed of 4.1% coffee grounds and 8.2% recycled white rubber.

The watch’s particular green color is a nod to the color of the Nespresso Master Origins Peru capsule. Inside, Hublot fits its HUB1280 Unico Manufacture automatic chronograph.

“This is a symbolic watch: in creating the Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin, Hublot and Nespresso have demonstrated that it is possible to add value to recycled raw materials – and that circularity has no limits,” Hublot explains in its promotional material for the new watch.

Hublot places the new Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin (a 200-piece limited edition) in an eco-friendly, reusable oak box specially decorated with the two brands’ logos, affixed using coffee grounds. 

Price: $24,100. 

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The Watches

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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Armin Strom Resonates With Frosted Green Dial 

Armin Strom expands its Mirrored Force Resonance offerings with a new model sporting a stunning green grenage dial.

The new Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance – Manufacture Edition Green.

Nicely matched with a grey synthetic suede ‘Alcantara’  strap, this limited edition (of fifty pieces) again highlights the independent watchmaker’s unusual resonance-based in-house movement that teams two balance wheels linked to create heightened chronometric precision and consistency.

The key to Armin Strom’s mastery of resonance in a wristwatch is the Armin Strom Resonance Clutch Spring, a tuning-fork-shaped metallic spring first seen in the 2016 Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance.

Set between the two oscillators on the left side of the dial, the Clutch Spring synchronizes the two movements as they keep time for the offset green dials.

Resonance, a technically difficult and hard to regulate technique used by only a few other watchmakers, essentially means the two movements become synchronized as they operate.

This creates a highly stable timekeeping rate that heightens the watch’s overall precision. When two movements resonate, overall operating efficiency improves while the potential of shock-inflicted error diminishes.

Admin Strom explains that it was inspired to create the new frosted green hue by some vintage equipment at its atelier.

“We chose this green because it harmonizes with the polished and decorated parts of the open-worked movement,” says Armin Strom’s Master Watchmaker and co-founder, Claude Greisler. “And the grenage finish gives a contrast to the polished indexes. This frizzy, kind of frosted surface reflects some light – but it is not too loud. It doesn’t overwhelm your attention and it shouldn’t compete with the movement.”

All the components within the 43mm steel watch are hand-polished. The dial side surfaces are also hand-finished with frosted, perlaged or circular-grained finishes. Armin Strom also assembled its movements twice “to ensure an uncompromising commitment to quality.” 

Price: $63,000. 

Specifications: Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance – Manufacture Edition Green 

(Reference no. ST22-RF.20, limited to 50 pieces.)

Movement: Armin Strom manufacture Caliber ARF21, manual winding, 25,200 vph with two independent regulating systems connected by a resonance clutch spring. Power reserve is 48 hours.

Case: 43mm by 11.55mm steel, sapphire crystal and caseback with anti-reflective treatment, water resistance to 30 meters.

Dial: Green with grenage center and a circular satin-brushed chapter ring and applied polished baton indices. Hands are steel and manufactured by Armin Strom, decorated by hand. Indications: Hours, minutes, twin-seconds. 

Strap: Grey Alcantara strap with white stitching and double folding clasp in stainless steel.

Price: $63,000.

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