Watch of the year: Parmigiani Fleurier takes our top spot
Mechanical watchmaking is a genre of luxury that likes to complicate for the sake of it. So it’s no surprise that it fell to the quiet man of Swiss haute horlogerie to distil the double-time-zone ‘GMT’ function – local hours hand paired with ‘home’ hours hand – in such an elegant, yet mercurial manner.
As you venture further from home, time-zone to time-zone, a button at the eight o’clock position of Parmigiani Fleurier’s gorgeous new rose-gold Tonda PF GMT Rattrapante skips your usual hours hand forward accordingly, in the process revealing the ‘home’ time back where you set off – another hours hand that was superimposed all along.
This ‘split GMT’ function is a world premiere, and it gets especially clever when you touch down on home turf: a second button embedded in the winding crown instantly tucks the home hand back beneath the normal hand, ‘rattrapante’ literally translating as ‘catch up’.
It’s in gold, because (hankies at the ready) home is where the heart is.
As a surprisingly overdue conceit, it’s enough to make any watchmaker slap their forehead. But suffice to say, engineering such a subtle play of micro-mechanics is a tough trick to pull off. One that demands the talents of a man like Michel Parmigiani, up in the Jura mountains since the Seventies. At a time when everyone was switching from mechanics to newfangled quartz electronics – even the hoary maisons of Switzerland – his precocious 25-year-old self stoically embarked on a route into clock and watch restoration.
Despite his youth, he realised how endangered so many historic crafts and skills were becoming. And by restoring the centuries-old creations of past masters, he necessarily acquired that entire knowledge. All the while balancing another crucial skill: that of the restorer himself, bringing another master’s work back to life without imposing any mark of his own.
It’s this ‘backseat’ aptitude that informs the aesthetic of the eponymous brand Monsieur Parmigiani would forge in the Nineties (‘Fleurier’ is the name of his village), entirely thanks to the backing of Sandoz, the big-pharma family behind Novartis whose vast collection he’d singlehandedly restored. Its manufacturing arm, Vaucher is now 25 per cent owned by Hermès and counts rather more flashy brands like Richard Mille on its books for bespoke movement development.
But Parmigiani Fleurier – or ‘PF’ to go by its dials’ adornment – is staying true to its original mantra of discerning discretion. Precisely demonstrated by the Tonda PF GMT you see here, launched at Dubai’s wonderful new Watch Week event in November. It’s London Time’s ‘Watch of 2023’, hands down (pun intended).
“It’s much better to see a black horse against a yellow background than ‘Ferrari’,” as PF’s CEO Guido Terrini noted last week, talking at the Old War Office’s new Raffles hotel, which itself has undergone an immaculate, eight-year restoration. “Discretion is always part of the elegance.
“We’re for a discerning audience that doesn’t need to ‘show’.”
Nonetheless, you’ll soon be able to ‘see’, as well as touch, at the new Parmigiani Fleurier boutique, which Terrini was in town to announce to the press. The ribbon will be cut at the southwest end of Bond Street, run by long-established multiple retailer Swiss Gallery. But if you really can’t wait, try asking nicely at SG’s incumbent bricks-and-mortar inside the Grosvenor Hotel on Park Lane. That guilloché engraved dial alone could never be done justice by newsprint.
• Parmigiani Fleurier’s Tonda PF GMT Rattrapante (£58,740 in rose gold) will be available soon at 45A Old Bond Street W1S 4QT; swissgallery.co.uk, parmigiani.com