James Bond would wear this Girard-Perregaux x Aston Martin watch
Roaring from the pits this month is Girard-Perregaux’s latest mechanical marvel, forged wheel-to-wheel with legendary British carmaker Aston Martin. (A fitting brand-match, given Ian Fleming kitted-out his DB5-driving double-O agent with a fictional gold watch from the Swiss watchmaker, in From Russia With Love.)
The new Neo Bridges (£32,100) is the fifth limited edition to come from the two marques – both of them cultishly, discerningly understated in their respective fields – and yet again it’s all about pushing the boundaries in materials science and marrying a shared, biomorphic aesthetic, rather than just stamping a second logo on the dial.
The sinuous contours of Aston’s new DB12 ‘super tourer’ come to bear on the 250 watches’ sculpted mechanics, drawing from front grille to spider-like alloy wheel. This is possible because of Girard-Perregaux’ unprecedented masterpiece of 1867, the ‘La Esmeralda’ pocket watch, which dared to showcase the winding barrel, geartrain and ticking balance wheel dial-side; effectively an inverted movement, suspended from three flawlessly finished metal spans. Spans now rendered in suitably racy and lightweight titanium rather than gold, coated by PVD in ‘Aston Martin’ racing green.