Dialling up the story
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
An elegantly simple watch dial is a joy for ever, but there’s always a place for doing something more flamboyant. Sprinkling pictorial magic this holiday season, Van Cleef & Arpels’ Lady Féerie Or Rose portrays a fairy in a pink-sapphire and diamond dress, with wings of pink plique-à-jour enamel, pointing her wand towards the minutes on a dial of guilloché mother of pearl. Van Cleef loves a fairy or a ballerina on a watch and this is fantasy horology taken to the max.
Van Cleef & Arpels Lady Féerie Or Rose, £104,000
Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art Tribute to Explorer Naturalists Tierra del Fuego, POA
Chaumet’s Infiniment 12 Rêverie Nocaraturne pays homage to the jewellery and watchmaking house’s Place Vendôme location. Its dial, with a deep-blue grand feu enamel backdrop by master enameller Anita Porchet, depicts the famous Paris address on a starry, starry night. The maison celebrated 240 years in the square in 2020 and each watch secretly incorporates a tiny stone taken from its 12 Place Vendôme home.
Vacheron Constantin looks to sea with its new Métiers d’Art “Tribute to Explorer Naturalists” – a collection of four watches in limited editions of 10. Vacheron released a model celebrating the work of the 16th-century cartographer Gerardus Mercator back in 1994 – its latest pieces focus on the scientific discoveries of the naturalists (among them Darwin) who sailed on the Beagle between 1831 and 1836. Vacheron’s engravers, enamellers, guilloché specialists and jewellers have come together to create pieces teeming with tropical plants, birds, butterflies and more. Choose between Cape Verde, Straits of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego and the Cape of Good Hope. Chopard also turns to nature in its latest Métiers d’Art “Impériale” piece with a Japanese Urushi lacquer dial decorated with golden flower buds and mother-of-pearl cherry blossoms.
Harry Winston Premier Kaleidoscope Automatic, £38,300
Rolex Oyster Perpetual Turquoise Blue Celebration Motif, £5,100.
Harry Winston’s Premier Kaleidoscope Automatic, with its bold colours, geometric shapes and trippy symmetry, is a diamond-accented take on the children’s toy. This year’s “Celebration” Rolex Oyster Perpetual features a jostle of multicoloured balloon-like bubbles. Meanwhile, there’s a little bit of Barbie about Richard Mille’s RM 07-01 Coloured Ceramics ladies’ timepieces. But the chief reference point is the style of the 1980s Italian design and architecture group Memphis Milano, whose geometric shapes make a cool angular statement.
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