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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On the seventiethanniversary of its groundbreaking Fifty Fathoms dive watch, Blancpain unveils the Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa, a new dive watch with a bezel that makes it possible to measure immersion times of up to three hours.
The new Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa.
The bezel, and an accompanying hand that completes one revolution in three hours, combine to form an innovative new dive watch tool. Blancpain CEO Marc A. Hayek and diver and photographer Laurent Bellesta have filed for a patent for the mechanism at the heart of the new watch, which Blancpain first began to develop in 2019.
Blancpain launches the new watch as it also celebrates the tenth anniversary of Gombessa , an undersea research initiative that Bellesta and Blancpain helped create in 2013. The Tech Gombessa also marks the launch of a new line in Blancpain’s dive watch collection.
Longer immersions
Bancpain explains that since the first Fifty Fathoms diver immersion times have notably extended, with the most experienced divers now capable of spending several hours underwater. Hayek and Ballesta devised the new three-hour timing mechanism to “meet the needs of all extreme divers, starting with the members of the Gombessa Expeditions whose research work involves long- duration deep dives.”
With an exterior that fits within the existing Fifty Fathoms family, the Tech Gombessa is nonetheless loaded with technical tweaks.
Inside the 47 mm Grade 23 titanium case demonstrating 300 meters of water resistance, Blancpain fits a new movement, automatic Caliber 13P8 with an impressive five-day power reserve. In addition, Blancpain created a black ceramic bezel inlay instead of the traditional sapphire, which has been given a stronger curve and tilt (towards the dial).
Blancpain has also endowed the Tech Gombessa dial with a new ‘absolute black’ finish said to capture almost 97% of the light. The watch’s hour-markers luminescent block-shaped orange appliques with blue luminescence, colors that differentiate between time-related information and diving times.
As with all Fifty Fathoms timepieces, the crown is screwed down, though here it is protected by a new crown guard with a trapeze-shaped design to match the watch’s new lug shape.
From the back, the wearer can see the new movement’s anthracite-colored oscillating weight, stamped with the Gombessa Expeditions logo, and which itself is given three large openings to better spy the movement.
Finally, Blancpain will supply the Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa with a black rubber strap screwed to the back of the lugs. The strap is reinforced with titanium and is teamed with an extension for wearing the watch over a diving suit.
Owners will also receive the watch in a special water-tight presentation box that houses a rest for the watch, the strap extension, a travel pouch, a magnifying glass, as well as a set of dividers and cutting tools.
Case:47mm grade 23 titanium, helium valve, central lugs attached from the inside of the case middle.
Dial: Absolute black,luminescent orange block-shaped appliques with blue emission, unidirectional 3-hour scale bezel with black ceramic inlay tilted towards the dial with white luminescent green markers, 3-hour dive-time hand.
Movement:Caliber 13P8, self-winding with 5-day power reserve.
Bracelet:Integrated black rubber strap with extension.
Hublot has previously offered other single-color 3-D Carbon versions of the MP-09 and even devised a rainbow edition late last year.
The automatic caliber makes use of a 
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.
