3,469 articles · 162 videos found · page 4 of 122
Deployant
The year was 1996, and Chopard had just inaugurated its own manufactory in Fleurier. The Chopard Manufacture was dedicated to crafting so-called “L.U.C” movements entirely decorated by hand. Today, over a quarter of a century on and dozens of models later, the L.U.C collection has grown into Chopard’s most prestigious line, with plenty of awardsRead More
Time+Tide
Chopard have been an important firm in the Swiss luxury landscape since they were founded in 1860, but they weren’t always the house of haute horology that they are today. It wasn’t until just over a quarter of a century ago, in 1993, when Karl-Friedrich Scheufele made the decision to refocus the brand’s energies into … ContinuedThe post VIDEO: The History of Chopard L.U.C watchmaking appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Time+Tide
Editor’s note: If big, do-anything, go-anywhere tickers are your jam, you’ll definitely want to check out the Glashütte Original Senator Cosmopolite in Steel. This is a serious piece of traveller’s kit, and a good-looking one at that. Read on for Justin’s review … The story in a second: It’s big, it’s complicated, it’s bloody clever. … ContinuedThe post It’s complicated – the Glashütte Original Senator Cosmopolite in Steel appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Time+Tide
In a battle that’s been brewing since the dawn of Time (and Tide, in 2014), Andrew and Felix finally pick up the tools and take on the challenge of taking apart and then rebuilding a manually wound movement. We lay our scene at the Omega Service Centre in Melbourne, and the occasion is somewhat of … ContinuedThe post VIDEO: Oh boy. Andrew vs Felix in watch rebuild battle at the Omega Service Centre. Watchmakers, look away … appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Time+Tide
The story in a second: It’s big, it’s complicated, it’s bloody clever. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I’ve got a real soft spot for German watchmaking, but especially for Glashütte Original. Underappreciated, and painfully under-marketed anywhere outside of Europe, they are one of VERY few brands that manufacture their own dials … ContinuedThe post IN-DEPTH: The Glashütte Original Senator Cosmopolite in Steel – a study in complex elegance appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
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Hodinkee
If there's a watch that seemingly stole the hearts of many collectors this year at Watches and Wonders, it's definitely Chopard's new blue-dialed L.U.C 1860 dress watch. The funniest part is that the new model is really only a dial color change. That's it. And yet, among a sea of new designs and complications, Chopard managed to pull off something much larger than its description on paper, and ended up being one of my personal favorite releases from the show. If you're familiar with the previous, now-discontinued salmon dial version of the L.U.C 1860 released back in 2023, well, chances are you already know much about this watch. But its identical specs are very much a good thing, as I think Chopard has really hit a home run with the 1860 as a proper, compact, and thin (8.2mm) dress watch amongst its larger L.U.C. movement-powered siblings. The 36.5mm case in Chopard's Lucent Steel alloy is very safe in its design, with smooth, curved lines and a fully-polished, rounded bezel and top lugs. While there aren't any little extra design touches that add any additional flair, the sides are vertically brushed to create a bit of contrast. Is the case boring as a result? Certainly not in my eye, as its subdued character works well in the 36.5mm format and, most importantly, it serves as a very nice frame for a spectacular dial. That dial, produced by Chopard's in-house dialmaker Metalem, is an absolute home run. And it surprises me to say this, given that I typically don't care a...
Hodinkee
What We Know Among the more attractive releases from Watches and Wonders this year is the new Chopard L.U.C. Strike One Titanium, now with a beautiful new dial treatment. In ethical 18k rose gold with salmon-colored galvanic treatment, with a hand-guilloché central medallion with a honeycomb motif, the Strike One is a watch that may fly under the radar for some. Not a minute repeater, not a grande et petite sonnerie, but rather a beautiful watch that chimes once at the top of the hour (a sonnerie au passage), it's still got a very romantic quality about it. Despite being a chiming watch, Chopard has (as they usually do) minimized the size as much as possible with a 40mm by 9.86mm case in Grade 5 titanium. That light metal should help emphasize the chime's sound, with the hammer on the dial side visible through an aperture for the full experience. Even better, the gong is made of sapphire and is connected in a monobloc construction (one piece) to the dial crystal to emphasize sound transmission. The dial itself is capped by a snail-shaped chapter ring and has rhodium-plated hour markers and hands, plus anthracite-colored printed transfers. This is all powered by the L.U.C. 96.32-L. With a two-barrel construction and micro-rotor, you get 65 hours of power reserve, automatic winding, and a 4Hz beat rate, all chronometer-certified by COSC, with Poinçon de Genève-certified quality. Chopard really shows bigger brands how to do it when it comes to finishing, so this is the kin...
Monochrome
Thirty years ago, Chopard’s co-president, Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, opened the Manufacture in Fleurier. The first in-house calibre, L.U.C 1.96, a slim automatic micro-rotor movement, made its debut inside the L.U.C XPS 1860 the following year. Rapidly ascending the complications ladder, in 2006, Chopard celebrated the tenth anniversary of its Manufacture with the release of the L.U.C […]
Monochrome
Chopard celebrates 30 years since the founding of its Manufacture in Fleurier, and the L.U.C collection, named after Louis-Ulysse Chopard, continues to highlight the brand’s most technical and refined timepieces. Among the anniversary releases, the new L.U.C XPS Prussian Blue presents an evolution of the sector-dial model in green introduced in 2024. This new edition […]
SJX Watches
To mark 30 years of its Fleurier manufacture, Chopard has introduced a new variant of the watch that started it all. The new Lucent steel L.U.C 1860 adds a blue dial to the brand’s flagship time-only dress watch. The L.U.C 1860 is short on novelty, being merely a new colour for a model that debuted in 2023, but the incremental improvements result in a sleek and sophisticated steel dress watch. Initial thoughts The L.U.C 1860 is very traditional dress watch in the sense that nothing feels exaggerated. At the same time, it doesn’t feel boring thanks to its guilloché dial and the obvious quality of the movement within. While there are some who believe that a proper dress watch must come in precious metal, the popularity of the steel-and-salmon L.U.C 1860 released in 2023 proves there’s an alternate perspective. The brand’s proprietary ‘Lucent’ steel makes the watch more accessible, especially in the age of near-record gold prices. Despite the use of a comparatively humble material, the case finishing remains high-end - though the design is generation behind the new case profile introduced for the Grand Strike. Since the original L.U.C 1860 debuted in 1997, it has always been a small watch. For a time, that left it out of step with consumer preferences, especially in the early 2000s, but tastes have once again shifted back in favour of smaller cases. In this context, the vintage-leaning 36.5 mm size feels just right. That said, while it makes sense for Chopar...
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Worn & Wound
Louis-Ulysse Chopard founded his eponymous watch company in 1860, but it took over 100 years for the brand to truly come into its own. In 1996, and after three years of development, the company debuted its own in-house movement. The wait seemed to have been worth it. The L.U.C 96.01-L immediately drew acclaim for beautiful finishing, embracing the microrotor, and COSC certification. It, and the subsequent L.U.C. 1860 dress watch, marked a sea change from reliance on third parties to true independence, arriving at a resurgence in fine mechanical watchmaking. Thirty years later, the L.U.C. family has expanded into dozens of variants, complications, and movements. But at 2026’s Watches & Wonders, Chopard pays tribute to 30 years of in-house manufacturing with a continuation of that vaunted original. The L.U.C 1860 Chronometer uses the same dial and microrotor movement from 1996, albeit with their own upgrades and unique design tweaks. The intricate white-gold dial features guilloché finishing in the center, emanating in scalloped waves from the Chopard logo and nameplate. The concentric circles are separated by thin bands of white gold, and delicate spear-shaped markers point inward, toward the dauphine hands. At 6 o’clock, the small-seconds dial echoes the twin-circle pattern of the overall dial, and Chopard specifically mentions the lack of a date window “to preserve purity.” Where the first L.U.C. 1860 had a white dial with gold accents, this Chronometer wears...
Deployant
Chopard celebrated their 50th anniversary of the L.U.C back in 1996. Here is the celebration watches. Karl-Friedrich Schuefele started the L.U.C manufacture in 1996 with the L.U.C movement. In 2025, Chopard released the L.U.C Grand Strike which we have covered last year. This year, we have the latest continuation of the L.U.C 1860 with anRead More
Monochrome
Chopard marks the 30th anniversary of its first in-house movement produced in the brand’s Fleurier Manufacture. A pivotal moment for Chopard, the calibre 1.96 was released in 1996 and is still regarded as one of the finest ultra-thin micro-rotor movements today. The first watch to feature the calibre was the L.U.C 1860, presented in a […]
Deployant
Girard-Perregaux celebrates the Year of the Horse with an interesting watch they christened as the La Esmeralda Tourbillon "A Secret" Eternity Edition.
Deployant
Patek Philippe reopens its Singapore Service Centre at the same location in Wheelock Place. Here is a brief of the newly renovated premises. Press Release.
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SJX Watches
The 30th anniversary of the Chopard L.U.C. manufacture was one anniversary among many this year, but it will likely be remembered thanks to the Grand Strike, the most complicated watch in Chopard’s history and its first grande sonnerie. Building on the successful Full Strike minute repeater architecture and making full use of the brand’s patented sapphire gongs, the Grand Strike is a chronometer-certified two-train clock watch with a push-button minute repeater. In this context, the presence of the tourbillon is almost a footnote. Initial thoughts I can count on one hand the number of brands that have created their own grande sonnerie wristwatch. It’s one of the few things in watchmaking that’s proven challenging enough to still be rare, even in the days of computer-aided design (CAD) and advanced manufacturing technology like wire erosion. For this reason, the grande sonnerie has a towering cultural presence among watchmakers and collectors, looming above all other complications. For Chopard, the Grand Strike represents the culmination of 30 years of the L.U.C. manufacture, the brand’s haute horlogerie division. The first impression of the Grand Strike is one of extraordinary depth. There’s not much of a dial, save for the minutes scale etched on the inside of the sapphire crystal, and the small concentric sub-dials for the dual power reserve displays. This depth shrinks the watch visually, and it feels dense and compact despite its rather large 43 mm size and...
Worn & Wound
There’s something strangely fitting about a new Timex collaboration with Toddy Snyder dropping this month in the form of the new Olive Marlin seen here. The Marlin, in its current form, is frequently described as being inspired by the style of the Mad Men era. The AMC series started many menswear trends and the archives of sites like ours and many watch and menswear forums are ripe with stories about Mad Men’s watches, how to achieve the Don Draper look, and so on. Mad Men is on my mind right now though not because of the release of this new piece from Timex, but because of the quite hysterical gaffe made by someone at HBO Max, who inadvertently put up uncut and unedited versions of the show when it made its HBO Max streaming premiere on the first of the month. This was supposed to be a big moment for the debut of the new 4K scans of the show, but instead, everyone is talking about a puke hose. I’m not the biggest Mad Men guy out there, but I like the show well enough, and I watched a few of my favorite episodes over the weekend to test the waters on a full rewatch. Maybe I’ll report back on that, at some point. For now, I can say that the style of the show (not just the clothes, but entire production design) remains just about perfect at evoking a very specific era, and the watches always played a major role in that. The Marlin would have felt right at home on this set. For this new Todd Snyder collaboration, the dial has been given a coat of the designer’s ...
Time+Tide
This impressive piece is Chopard's most complex watch design yet, the fruit of over 11,000 hours of research and development.The post Chopard’s new L.U.C Grand Strike is the most complex horological creation the Maison has ever made appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Fratello
It certainly seems like 2025 is the year of anniversaries. Big names are celebrating many centuries of watchmaking, and many brands, young and old, are releasing exceptional commemorative creations. Some are intricate masterpieces that express their maker’s savoir-faire, while others represent an evolution of a historical benchmark creation. The Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide is […] Visit Introducing: The Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide - A 28-Piece Limited-Edition Biretrograde Perpetual Calendar to read the full article.
SJX Watches
Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Roger Dubuis (RD) revisits its earliest triumph with the Hommage La Placide, a 28-piece limited edition that reimagines the brand’s signature bi-retrograde perpetual calendar. Named for the late Dubuis’ childhood Boy Scouts nickname, the Placide celebrates the classical roots of the Geneva-based manufacture while honouring the design codes that first put RD on the map three decades ago. Faithful to the originals yet refined in execution, the Placide reaffirms the brand’s ability to merge mechanical ingenuity with expressive design - a reminder that beneath its modern flamboyance lies genuine horological pedigree. Initial thoughts Roger Dubuis today is best known for its over-the-top, modern design - skeletonised movements, sharp case lines, and a visual language that often borders on the theatrical. It’s a far cry from the brand’s origins three decades ago, when Dubuis himself was focused on classical watchmaking rooted in Genevan tradition. Paying tribute to those early creations, the Placide reimagines the bi-retrograde perpetual calendar that first established the horloger genevois 30 years ago. The bi-retrograde perpetual calendar was first conceived in the late 1980s, when Dubuis collaborated with Jean-Marc Wiederrecht to develop a novel perpetual calendar mechanism featuring twin retrograde indicators for Harry Winston. It was only in 1995, upon founding his own brand, that Dubuis introduced the complication ...
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Deployant
Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide. Roger Dubuis is going back to it's roots by releasing a modern revival of the Hommage. Limited to 28 pieces.
Time+Tide
The Les Cabinotiers Homage to Epic Warriors Minute Repeater and The Labours of Heracles unite grand feu enamel and hand‑engraving.The post These Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers La Quête métiers d’art pieces tell centuries-old stories appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Time+Tide
Vacheron Constantin releases four ultra-complicated watches as part of its 270th anniversary celebrations, all with astronomical themes.The post This quartet of Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers La Quête high complications honour 270 years of astronomic momentum appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Monochrome
Launched in 2021 for the Manufacture’s 25th anniversary, the L.U.C Quattro Spirit 25 was Chopard’s first in-house jumping hour watch, pairing a pure 40mm case with the long-autonomy L.U.C 98 calibre and a Grand Feu enamel dial. That model has since spawned further variants (including rose-gold reference with a gold-based dial graced with green straw […]
Fratello
During my 12 years of living in Germany, I participated in numerous high-level business meetings. You know the type - sitting around a table, wearing a suit, and drinking coffee from Alfi pitchers. As you can tell, that wasn’t always fun, so I often amused myself by checking out the watches on people’s wrists. Most […] Visit Hands-On With The Glashütte Original Senator Excellence Panorama Date Moon Phase to read the full article.
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