Celebrity Life

H. Moser & Cie. unveils its latest Heritage collection creation as a tribute to the manufacture’s founding year and Russian roots.

The post H. Moser & Cie: Heritage Bronze “Since 1828” Limited Edition appeared first on LUXUO.

If there's one thing we know and love about H. Moser & Cie, it's the two polar opposite sides to the watchmaker. There's perhaps no other company crazy enough to make watches out of cheese or poke fun at Apple Watch (even if it's just to make a point), and yet have a complete grasp of elegance and minimalism, reimagining complications and creating the most stunning fumé and Vantablack dials.

It's the latter that caught the attention of Mark Cho, who first met Edouard Meylan, CEO of Moser in New York two years ago. An avid watch collector, Cho was fascinated by Moser's dials – and when both men began chatting, they realised they had a shared passion for clothing and watches. Soon enough, the idea of a collaboration began to surface.

Cho co-founded The Armoury, a highly specialised menswear brand alongside business partner Alan See in 2010, to bring classic tailoring and style to the modern man while telling the stories of truly exceptional craftsmen and their products. They have created collaboration watches before – just last year, The Armoury partnered with independent Scottish watch brand Anordain to create a small production of mechanical watches with special vitreous enamel dials.

But this year, it's Moser on the map. The Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse is truly a Mark Cho watch. "When Edouard and I first started talking about the idea of making a watch together, my main requirement was that it was small," says Cho in the official release. "I like watches that are discreet but reveal a deeper complexity if you pay them some attention. To me, H. Moser & Cie's fumé dial and Vantablack dial are iconic and I wanted to work with one of them as a starting point for the design. Quickly, I started to favour the Vantablack and I had the idea to add markings to the dial somehow. My design partner, Elliot Hammer, suggested that we imagine the design with the theme of a total solar eclipse. Thus, the Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse was born."

The watch is a perfect balance of science and poetry. Named the blackest black, Vantablack absorbs 99.965 percent of light and is a material made from carbon nanotubes. Like a solar eclipse, the Vantablack dial evokes the silhouette of the moon, edged by a thin steel bezel and red gold or steel polished inner bezel that depicts the halo of the solar corona. We can't stare too long at a solar eclipse but at this watch, we can.

Cho also asked for subtle details to be added to the dial, including small seconds, Breguet hands and dotted hour markers in steel or red gold. This last part presented a rather large challenge to the watchmaker. Vantablack isn't a pigment but carbon nanostructures that cannot come into contact with anything else. It took some trial and error but the final creation is absolutely worth it.

Insisting on creating a small size watch at 38mm, the Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse is also the smallest Endeavour watch to date. "Absolutely everything in this model links back to this quest for ultimate elegance, combining classicism with a contemporary feel," says Meylan. "Its 38mm diameter is perfectly balanced. We opted for the smallest and finest of our movements, the hand-wound HMC 327 calibre with an offset small second at 6 o'clock, reminiscent of a pocket-watch style."

The watch comes with a black calf leather strap specifically designed by The Armoury to enhance the overall elegance of the watch. Two editions are available, both cased in steel, but one with red gold indices and hands, and the other in all-steel. The Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse is limited to 28 pieces per version.

The timepieces are now available in The Armoury stores in New York and Hong Kong, as well as online at both The Armoury and H. Moser & Cie.

The post The Armoury Collabs with H. Moser & Cie on the Ultimate Gentleman’s Timepiece appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

We take a closer look at colourful luxury watches of every shade and hue.

Back in the day, watch dials were black or white, silver or gold. Now they come in just about every hue imaginable. We sift through the spectrum of shades you can strap on to your wrist, from vibrant red to regal violet – and even a veritable kaleidoscope of colour. Here are the best colourful luxury watches.

The Best Colourful Luxury Watches

Breitling

This colourful luxury watches capsule collection of Top Time chronographs from Breitling, which pays tribute to three American performance cars of the 1960s – the Shelby American Cobra (left, with blue-and-white dial), the Chevrolet Corvette (centre, with red-and-black dial) and the Ford Mustang (right, with green and black dial) – nails the vintage vibe perfectly. In 42mm (Corvette and Mustang) and 40mm (Cobra) stainless-steel cases and with racing-style leather straps, all three watches feature ETA-based automatic movements – on the 42mm models it’s the 1/8th-of-a-second Calibre 25, while the 40mm version gets the 1/4th-of-a-second Calibre 41; all beat at 4Hz for a 42-hour reserve of power. Pops of contrasting colour on each dial’s outer tachymeter scale ramp up the appeal still further.

H. Moser & Cie.

Although with a similar design to that of the Heritage Bronze “Since 1828”, Moser’s Heritage Dual Time not only gets a lustrous sunburst fumé burgundy dial but, to burnish its already convincing vintage pilot’s credentials, it also features a second 24- hour hand that, when the user isn’t travelling, can cleverly be hidden beneath the main hour hand. If that weren’t sufficiently indicative of the ingenuity of this small, Schaffhausen-based manufacture, the brand logo is rendered in transparent lacquer and, in certain lights, becomes almost invisible. In a 42mm steel case, the watch is powered by the automatic HMC calibre, which runs at 3Hz for a 72-hour reserve.

Grand Seiko

If the sword-shaped hands and multi-faceted hour markers (which glint beguilingly from whichever angle you look at them) weren’t sufficient to tell you it’s a Grand Seiko, then just look at the dial of this Snow on the Blue Lake limited edition. Inspired by the winter landscape of Hachimandai in Iwate prefecture, the delicate light-blue hue recalls sunshine on snow. With just 140 pieces available across five key Asian markets, this delightful and rare timepiece is presented in a 40mm steel case housing the high-beat 9S85 calibre, a super-accurate automatic movement offering a power reserve of 55 hours.

Omega

Although the current design codes of Omega’s dressy Constellation collection were set back in the early 1980s, such is the way of trends that it seems they’ve swung right back into vogue. It thus comes as no surprise that the brand has decided to further enliven the Constellation’s appeal with this recent drop of three 36mm ladies’ versions with diamond-set bezels, sun-brushed coloured PVD dials and matching alligator straps. While all have steel cases and are powered by Omega’s Metas-certified 8800 co-axial automatic calibre, the burgundy model features a steel bezel, the blue reference comes with a bezel in yellow gold and the brown version has a bezel in Sedna gold.

Audemars Piguet

One of the main criticisms voiced when Audemars Piguet unveiled its Code 11.59 three years ago was that, while technically and in terms of craftsmanship the watches were exceptional, the dials were somewhat uninspiring – and especially on the simpler time-and-date models. The subsequent release, in September 2020, of five new chronograph and three-hand models with sunburst lacquered dials in blue, grey, burgundy and purple, went a long way towards addressing those issues – and especially as those opulent hues are offset with white and pink gold for the case and dial furniture, and matched with luxurious alligator straps. In fact, we’d even go as far as saying they’re actually rather fabulous.

Bvlgari x MB&F

In an unparalleled collaboration, Bvlgari and MB&F revealed two extravagantly over-the-top, gem-set versions of the independent Swiss watchmaker’s Flying T at the recent Dubai Watch Week. One, shown here, is in rose gold with a pink alligator strap and the other comes in white gold with a green strap – and both are covered in clear and coloured stones. In 39 x 20mm cases with delicately high-domed crystals, these 20-piece limited editions aren’t watches that can be worn every day, but they do demonstrate the spectacular results that can be achieved when avant-garde watchmaking and high-jewellery creativity collide.

Rolex

To Rolex-watchers accustomed to minuscule yet Earth-shaking changes in case diameters or bezel thicknesses, the company’s drop of new watches in the late summer of 2020 must have been a particular shock because among them was a quintet of Oyster Perpetuals in 36mm steel cases and brightly coloured lacquer dials. Four of them – in yellow, turquoise, coral red and candy pink – are shown here; there was also a not-quite-so-shattering green, and this year they were joined by 36mm Datejusts with palm- motif dials in olive green, gold and grey. All these may be unusually light-hearted on the outside, but they’re resolutely Rolex within, boasting Superlative Chronometer movements with Chronergy escapements and a 70-hour reserve of power.

Richard Mille

Yet another tribute to the long-time Richard Mille friend, ambassador and tennis great, the new RM 35-03 Rafael Nadal brings a new patented innovation – in the form of a butterfly rotor, three years in the development – to the brand’s high-tech box of tricks. This new feature, says the brand, “allows the wearer to directly interact with the rotor’s geometry, controlling the movement’s winding speed based on lifestyle and activity levels …” Philistines that we are, however, we’re more interested in the watch’s colour palette, which on this version includes blue Quartz TPT, red, yellow and white (there’s another model in mostly white Quartz TPT and light blue).

Hublot

Never one of the shrinking violets of the Swiss watch industry, Hublot has become renowned for pushing the boat out – though, in this, its latest collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, the vessel in question is more superyacht than skiff. In fact, the limited-edition Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow, whose name pretty much says it all, is described by Hublot as “a whirlwind of transparency and colour”, which indeed it would be if you were to combine a 45mm case fashioned from solid sapphire with a rotating dial comprising 384 brightly coloured gemstones. And yes, if you were wondering, it even tells the time.

The post Time in Technicolour: Colourful Luxury Watches in Every Shade appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The H. Moser & Cie Streamliner Perpetual Calendar is what the brand thinks a more practical complicated watch should look like.

The post H. Moser & Cie Streamliner Perpetual Calendar: No Frills but Plenty of Thrills appeared first on LUXUO.

We engage with H. Moser & Cie CEO Edouard Meylan on key points in watchmaking. As always, he does not pull any punches.

The post H. Moser & Cie CEO: Straight Talk on Watchmaking appeared first on LUXUO.

The H. Moser & Cie Streamliner Perpetual Calendar is what the brand thinks a more practical complicated watch should look like

The post H. Moser & Cie Streamliner Perpetual Calendar: No Frills but Plenty of Thrills appeared first on LUXUO.

H. Moser & Cie introduces the $100,000 Heritage Perpetual Calendar Midnight Blue as the latest limited edition Heritage Collection timepiece. The new H. Moser & Cie Heritage Perpetual Calendar Midnight Blue Enamel timepiece joins the Heritage Centre Seconds and Heritage Tourbillon as the third watch in the Heritage Collection, a line that aims to the […]

The post H. Moser $110,000 Heritage Perpetual Calendar Midnight Blue Revealed appeared first on Billionaire Toys.