IN FOCUS / The fine watch icons, edited by an expert
Choosing a watch for a serious occasion means finding one with the gravitas to match the moment. That’s not to say you should play it safe, but it makes sense to look at designs that have the history and status to match the occasion. Here, watch expert James Gurney – who has written about timepieces for titles including GQ and The Telegraph – shares five watches that balance contemporary style and individual flavour with enough heritage to make sure they won’t date.
Bell & Ross BR03
Bell & Ross do vintage with an unmatched sharpness and clarity, which is why the Paris-based brand never looks anything other than contemporary. While the BR03-94 ‘Horolum’ may draw on the aviation standards of decades ago, the detailed touches, such as the sandwich dial backed with Superluminova with its cut-out hour markers and numerals and the lume-filled dagger hands, bring the watch right up to date. Bell & Ross design in Paris but make in Switzerland, which means the watch is as reliable and robust as can be. The BR03-94 has a self-winding movement, anti-reflective sapphire glass, steel case and calf-skin strap.
Zenith Pilot
Zenith’s association with aviation goes right back to the earliest days of flight with Louis Blériot wearing a Zenith watch when he became the first to fly across the English Channel in 1909. With their Belle-Époque hands and number fonts, engraved caseback and onion crown, contemporary pilot’s watches from Zenith take the boldness of design that marked the era. They have even recreated the patina that hard-working watches acquire over a century of use, from the gun-metal finish of the case, to the nubuck strap and the grained treatment on the dial. Inside is Zenith’s superb Elite 679 self-winding movement.
Tag Heuer Carrera
TAG Heuer’s Carrera Calibre 5 also harks back to a Sixties original that was named for the famed road race that crossed Mexico on the Pan-American Highway. However, in this version at least, the design has a definitively contemporary feel. The new Carrera 5 is more complicated than first meets the eye, as the details of the concave dial, hands and applied hour markers all harmonise effectively to give an architectural sense of space and precision. That’s nicely enhanced with a sapphire glass with anti-reflective coating on both sides and an unadorned bezel. This is all the more appropriate as Jack Heuer, the designer of the original Carrera, was a devotee of Brazilian Modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer.
Girard-Perregaux Laureato
Girard-Perregaux has recently brought back the Laureato (it was named after Dustin Hoffman’s Oscar-winning film, The Graduate) in a form much closer to its Seventies debut. A complex arrangement of angles, planes and curves mark the Laureato as one of Girard-Perregaux’s most enduring designs – quite an achievement in a company that’s been making watches for more than two centuries. Matched with a Clou-de-Paris dial, blue and white luminescent accents on the hands and markers and a GP3000-series chronograph movement, the Laureato is a watch that will still look the part for decades to come.
Favre-Leuba Deep Blue
Favre-Leuba is one of the oldest names in Swiss watchmaking, but, in its present incarnation, it has been advocating a very contemporary concern for the environment – in particular through the brand’s ongoing support for legendary Arctic explorer Pen Hadow’s 90°North Unit. The Raider Deep Blue is a serious diving watch: water-resistant to 300m and fitted with a uni-directional, rotating bezel, marked with a 20-minute dive sector in orange, luminescent hands. This is set against a midnight-black dial and an anti-reflective sapphire-crystal face.