During its first appearance at Watches and Wonders in Geneva, which this year concluded on April 2, Frederique Constant unveiled a special thirty-fifth anniversary edition of its Classic Tourbillon Manufacture.
The new Frederique Constant Classic Tourbillon Manufacture, now measuring 39mm in diameter.
Offered in a now-smaller 39mm rose gold case and sporting a beautiful anthracite grey sun-brushed dial with gold hands, the new watch is a cleanly designed model that, at $27,595, is among the most ‘affordable’ in-house Swiss Made tourbillon-regulated watches available, a distinction in line with this Geneva manufacturer’s long-held aim to create high-value luxury watches.
As noted, this latest example of the Frederique Constant Classic Tourbillon Manufacture measures 39mm in diameter, the new size for the Classic Manufacture series. Previous examples of the watch measured 42mm in diameter. The three-hand watch continues to be powered by the in-house automatic FC-980 caliber, first developed in 2008.
Also celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary, Frédérique Constant offers the watch as an anniversary model in a limited edition of 150, each one individually numbered. In keeping with the brand’s own traditions, the tourbillon is exposed at the 6 o’clock position.
Frédérique Constantfits the movement with a silicon escapement wheel and anchor, which means the owner will benefit from a non-magnetic movement unaffected by variations in temperature.
The watchmaker also engraves each watch’s individual serial number on the rim of the sapphire caseback.
Through the back, the owner can eye (and display) the FC-980 caliber’s fine decor, which includes beveling, beading, circular graining, straight-grained flanks and mirror polishing.
The Frederique Constant Classic Tourbillon Manufacture comes on a dark matte brown leather strap with deployant clasp. Price: $27,595.
Bulgari focuses on its eight-sided Octo Roma collection for early 2023 as it launches the collection’s first chronograph. In addition, look for three new Bulgari Octo Roma Automatic dial options and four Octo Roma Tourbillon watches, each with its own technical twist.
Octo Roma Chronograph
As an early 2023 focus debut, the new Octo Roma Chronograph introduces a new Bulgari movement, Caliber BVL 399, visible through the watch’s clear sapphire back.
The new Bulgari Octo Roma Chronograph, here with a blue dial. It’s also offered with a black dial.
Two models are included in the debut, one with a black dial and one in blue. Both feature an eye-catching Clous de Paris, or hobnail, pattern that appears as small pyramids across the dial, here broken only by the three sunburst-pattern chronograph subdials.
Bulgari has been especially careful designing the pushers, which are nicely integrated into the 42mm by 12.4mm steel case. The pushers are only slightly visible, seemingly flowing from the angled lugs directly to the crown protector.
The new Bulgari Octo Roma Chronograph also features a screw-in steel crown with a ceramic insert, is water-resistant to 100 meters and offersSuperLumiNova-filled metallic hands, indexes and numerals.
Bulgari attaches the watch to the wrist with a polished and satin-brushed stainless-steel bracelet with a folding clasp and includes an easily interchangeable rubber strap with each watch.
Price: 9,900 euros.
The new Bulgari Octo Roma Automatic, here with a white dial and rubber strap.
Octo Roma Automatic
Sporting the same fetching Clous de Paris dial treatment as the new chronograph, the three new automatic models each offer a three-dimensional dial option to the Roma Automatic collection. Differing ambient light levels will subtly alter the character of the dial, though the large 12 and 6 and the long hour markers allow time to be read quickly at any angle. The hands, hour markers and Arabic numerals are enhanced with SuperLumiNova.
Bulgari offers three colors with the new dial pattern: blue, anthracite and white.
This 41mm by 9.1mm steel watch with three hands and date is powered by the existing in-house Caliber BVL 191 movement decorated with Côtes de Genève motif, visible through the clear sapphire back.
Bulgari equips both the Octo Roma Automatic and the Octo Roma Chronograph with a tool-free interchangeable wristband system. Each watch is also water-resistant to a depth of 100 meters.
Price: 7,900 euros.
Four Octo Roma Tourbillon Watches
Two of the Tourbillon models, the Octo Roma Precious Naturalia (165,000 euros) and Precious Tourbillon Lumière (190,000 euros) both feature minerals within their cases or dials.
The Bulgari Octo Roma Precious Naturalia features a slice of tiger’s eye on the caliber and the indexes.
The former includes polished tiger eye on its caliber, mainplate and indexes while then latter glows with diamonds set across a 38mm rose gold case.
The Octo Roma Precious Tourbillon Lumière features a new 38mm case size.
Two Bulgari Octo Roma tourbillon debuts are especially contemporary. One, the 44mm Octo Roma Papillon Tourbillon (130,000 euros) is a black DLC titanium-cased, jumping hour model named in reference to the Daniel Roth precursors of yore. Sporting a very rare central tourbillon, the watch shows the hour through a fixed window at noon, while the minutes are displayed on a semicircle graduated from 0 to 60 and alternately traversed by two diamond-shaped hands.
A sketch of the Bulgari Octo Roma Papillon Tourbillon. Images coming soon.
The second contemporary model is an Octo Roma Striking Tourbillon Sapphire (85,000 euros) that revives an earlier flying tourbillon chiming model, but with a newly refined black DLC titanium and sapphire case. We’ll have more information and images of these two new models in future posts.
At Watches and Wonders 2023 TAG Heuer adds two new Carrera watches that feature a new domed ‘Glassbox’ crystal.
One of two new 39mm Carrera Chronographs fit with a vintage-inspired Glassbox crystal.
One debut, a 39mm Carrera Chronograph, will arrive in two dial options and with an updated movement. The second is a Carrera Chronograph Tourbillon, a sister watch to a collection of previously introduced extra sporty Carrera tourbillon watches.
The new 42mm TAG Heuer Carrera Chronograph Tourbillon is set under a Glassbox crystal.
In addition to these debuts, TAG Heuer adds color to two existing 42mm steel Carrera Chronographs. With a black or a blue dial, these new chronographs inject vivid orange detailing meant to recall the look of classic race car speedometers.
TAG Heuer also expands its Aquaracer nautical watch collection with an all-gold Aquaracer Professional 200 sporting a new movement, manufacture Caliber TH31-00, which delivers an 80-hour power reserve.
A second new Aquaracer Professional 200 series adds bi-color gold and steel models to the collection, offering four models in two case sizes: two at 40mm and another pair at 30mm. We’ll have more about TAG Heuer’s new expansion of the Aquaracer collection in an upcoming post.
The new Glassbox chronographs are inspired in part by the reference 3147 “Dato 12” , the first Carrera with chronograph and calendar functions, and the rare reference 2447 NS.
But TAG Heuer looked to the 1970s for the inspiration for the new domed crystals that top these debuts, remaking in sapphire the hesalite crystals found on Carrera watches from that era.
The new crystal features a curve that flows seamlessly over the tachymeter scale, which runs around the dial edge and into the case. TAG Heuer has also added curves to the flange and indexes.
The additional curvature pleases the eye and also means the tachymeter can be read from a wider range of angles. The new steel-cased chronographs also sport new pushers.
To kick-off the new collection, TAG Heuer offers one new model with a familiar blue dial on a blue calfskin leather strap. The second model debuts with a sportier black and silver ‘reverse panda’ dial (above) and comes on a black perforated calfskin leather strap.
Both of the new TAG Heuer Carrera Glassbox Chronographs are powered by Caliber TH20-00, an updated version of the Heuer 02. Visible through the clear sapphire caseback, the new movement now features enhanced decoration and a bi-directional oscillating weight. Earlier versions only charged the movement’s mainspring when rotating in one direction. Both are priced at $6,450.
According to TAG Heuer Movements Director Carole Forestier, this new rotor design is a more significant change than you might imagine. When rotating daily, the new rotor is said to deliver faster and more reliable winding to ensure that the watch is more precise and that it is running closer to its maximum 80-hour power reserve.
Also new is the date display position. The date is at 6 o’clock on the blue-dialed model and at 12 o’clock on the ‘reverse panda’ version. Both new positions are said to clarify the wearer’s reading of the chronograph.
Chronograph Tourbillon
With the new Carrera Chronograph Tourbillon (above, $21,000), the watchmaker adds a sister model to the existing Carrera tourbillon, but here the tourbillon is framed (for the first time) with a smaller case (42mm) and a glass box crystal.
Echoing the look of the new Glassbox chronographs, the new tourbillon modelis powered by Caliber TH20-09, TAG Heuer’s in-house tourbillon movement. This is a chronometer-certified automatic caliber with a chronograph function and an impressive sixty-five-hour power reserve.
With the Glassbox crystal, TAG Heuer expands the ability of the viewer to view the tourbillon. On the dial, TAG Heuer has curved the flange and indexes to both mirror and complement the edge of the crystal.
New silver rings make the chronograph sub-dials especially easy to see while the chronograph’s central seconds hand is triangular shaped much like hands seen on 1960s race car dashboard instruments.
New 42mm Carrera Chronographs
One of two new 42mm Carrera Chronographs, each with new colorful dial accents.
In addition to itsGlassbox debuts, TAG Heuer also adds new color options to existing 42mm Carrera Chronographs.
With a black or a blue dial, these new chronographs offer orange details. Both are powered by TAG Heuer’s Heuer 02, an in-house automatic chronograph movement, and both arrive on high-end calfskin straps. Price: $5,550.
With a white ceramic ball bouncing around a miniature roulette wheel with thirty-seven pockets, the new Jacob & Co. Astronomia Casino is a watch lover’s best high-end bet. This playful addition to the ongoing Astronomia collection is a slimmer version of the 2019 edition and it places all bets on the dial while a flying tourbillon enlivens the back of the watch.
By removing the rotating orbs, flying tourbillon and skeletal dial (as seen on the earlier edition) from the top of the watch, Jacob & Co. has devised a more wrist-friendly Casino. Now 16mm thick (rather than the 24mm size of the earlier model), the watch’s 44-mm diameter rose gold case is crafted from polished rose gold and topped with a domed sapphire case.
When the user presses the pusher at the 8 o’clock position, the roulette wheel spins, almost friction-free. This causes the ceramic ball to bounce in a truly random manner between the crystal and the mirror-polished wheel-track flange. The ball will find its way to one of the thirty-seven pockets. Then, presumably, the winner collects.
Emulating a high-end betting house, Jacob & Co. has appointed the Astronomia Casino with appropriately luxurious fittings. The hours and minutes dial is made of a single slab of polished black onyx. Jacob & Co. has shaped dial’s applied 5N gold indices in a nod to the kite-cut sapphires it uses in several of its other watches.
As noted, Jacob & Co. places its flying tourbillon on the back of the watch, which is powered by the new caliber JCAM51 that boasts a comfortable seventy-two-hour power reserve. The arms on the flying tourbillon carriage are engraved and lacquered to match the roulette wheel on the opposite side. The same pattern is also seen on two plates on the caseback that act as winding and time-setting crowns.
Movement: Manufacture Jacob & Co. manual winding JCAM51 with apower reserve of 72 hours.
Functions: Hours and minutes, flying tourbillon on caseback at 6 o’clock, 1 rotation/min., roulette animation on demand with Pusher at 8 o’clock, winding and time-setting on caseback.
Case: 44mm by 16.3mm rose gold with rose gold back with engravings and lacquered roulette pockets. Sapphire crystal with anti-reflective treatment, water resistance to 30 meters.
Dial: Black Onyx with 5N gold kite-shaped indices.
Hands: Skeleton with 5N Gold, red tip andwhite SuperLuminova.
Roulette: Red, black and green lacquered pockets, ceramic ball.
Flange: Black PVD, 8 rhodium-plated diamond-shaped deflectors.
Bracelet: Black alligator strap with 18-karat rose gold deployant buckle.
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.
The watchmaker also engraves each watch’s individual serial number on the rim of the sapphire caseback.
Bulgari attaches the watch to the wrist with a polished and satin-brushed stainless-steel bracelet with a folding clasp and includes an easily interchangeable rubber strap with each watch.
Hublot has previously offered other 
