The flow of unveilings from this year's SIHH 2011 just doesn't want to stop. Among dozens of look-alikes, the new Roger Dubuis Le Chronographe La Monegasque (Ref. MG44-680-90-00/0ER01/B) with its uniquely shaped body and no-nonsense dial feels like a breath of fresh air.
For the year 2011, the Italian-based Officine Panerai adds a number of new models to their historic 1950 Collection. The Luminor 1950 3 Days (PAM 372) is the most affordable of them all.
During the SIHH 2011 event, JeanRichard has presented its new take on their successful line of cushion-shaped watches. The Highlands Sand GMT features the familiar exterior, which is now presented in a more sanguine (if a trifle militarist) khaki color scheme and even offers a complementary calfskin leather strap with the standard textile strap that looks like it came directly from a tactical rifle.
Girard-Perregaux is proudly expanding its 1945 Collection with the deliberately archaic Vintage 1945 XXL (ref. 25880-52-721-BB6A) model. Offering a combination of a vintage-style exterior and a modern (albeit very simple) mechanism, the watch is a sort of a daily beater for the kind of people who can afford one at a price of a base Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedan.
It is definitely going to be a year of remakes! At the upcoming Baselworld 2011 show, Longines will reveal its new Twenty-Four Hours (ref. L2.751.4.53.4) "aviator." Featuring everything a die-hard fan of vintage style could hope for (well, perhaps sans the movement since the new version comes powered by a modern self-winding mechanism), the new timekeeper is a good example of a "vintage-modern" pilot's watch that successfully combines historic styling with reliability and ease of use provided by modern technology.
During the SIHH 2011 event, Richard Mille presented its RM 030 model with a so-called "declutchable" rotor: a complication that, unlike something as unnecessarily sophisticated as a tourbillon or a minute repeater, is not just nice to have but is actually quite useful for many reasons.
Designed to slow down the process of wearing-out of the self-winding mechanism, the declutchable rotor is what it is: a rotor that, colloquially speaking, disengages its "clutch" the same way an automatic gearbox declutches, um, automatically when you press on the brake pedal while stopping at a traffic light. In this particular instance, the winding system is physically disengaged from the winding barrel as soon as the estimated power reserve reaches the 50-hour mark.
As the name implies, the new JeanRichard Bressel Hommage a Daniel (ref. 60119-52-70A-AA6) is a tribute to the gorgeous Daniel pocket watch from the XVIII century. Created by Daniel JeanRichard just over 300 years ago at 1710, it featured a sophisticated chain and fusee mechanism, featured an egg-like case that allowed to admire the mechanism in all of its beauty, and can be considered a true marvel even in our time after three centuries of constantly accelerating technological progress.
The 2011 Richard Mille RM 029 Automatic Big Date offers RM's signature tonneau case, an expertly skeletonized movement, and an oversized date module. Soon to be available in three versions of its mildly oversized body, the RM 029, as always, is going to be -ahem- reassuringly expensive and deliciously exclusive: just what we like, right?
