Star Maker
Shine brightly in Piaget’s new Limelight Stella timepiece for women
Piaget knows how to please us ladies. Stylish women since Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Sophia Loren in the Sixties have been well served by the brand when it comes to striking timepieces.
From the vintage icon watches of its Extremely Piaget High Jewellery collection through its slim Antiplano dress watches with their slinky bracelet designs to the Hollywood glamour of the Limelight collection, Piaget presents myriad designs for all kinds of women.
With its latest watch, the Limelight Stella, it’s the first time the brand has created such a complicated design specifically for the female wrist. The new timepiece, which was designed and developed entirely in the company’s workshops at La Côte-aux-fées and Geneva, was unveiled just prior to the Watches & Wonders exhibition in Hong Kong last month.
A movement featuring an oversized moonphase display powers the Limelight Stella; the moon has always been a symbol of femininity, and Piaget expresses a new approach to this theme in its masterful watchmaking skills. The maison has created a wonderful horological complication that is a subtle yet complex mechanism, which enables it to display the lunar cycle with an exceptional degree of precision, as well as tell the time. While many standard moon-phase complications are accurate to within one day every two-and-ahalf years, the Limelight Stella is so accurate that you would only need a one-day correction after 122 years. As with all Piaget movements, it has been created in-house.
Piaget is well known for being as accomplished at aesthetics as it is mechanics so it’s no surprise that, aside from its fascinating technical achievements, this watch is unmistakably feminine and glamorous with its stunning gem-settings in either
18-karat rose-gold or white-gold. In addition, the deep blue moon-phase disc depicts not only the moon but also a lovely constellation design, and the counterweight of the second hand is a star. With 14 diamonds set in a chevron shape underscoring the moon-phase and a further 126 brilliant-cut diamonds set on the bezel, there’s plenty of feminine sparkle to enjoy. This is another elegant and refined timepiece from Planet Piaget, yet with enough quirkiness to make it stand out from the rest. Piaget says it has been inspired to create this watch because, “The moon is perpetually intriguing. Despite it constantly changing its appearance, we know only its face. It is ever surprising. Still visible when the sun rises, it appears before the latter has set... it remains elusive.”
The brand encouraged its designers to create the timepiece as a “tribute to a woman in love with freedom” and says, “Setting a perfect stage for the eternal charm of femininity, everything about the Limelight Stella contributes to enhancing its elegance and glamour. In a play on shape-in-shape effects, the case reveals a subtle balance featuring an ‘oval inside a circle’ theme that extends through to the heart of the dial. The aesthetic of this architecture based on pure, flowing, classic and daring lines is accentuated by the sunburst dial motif enhanced by slender applied gold hour-markers.”
Piaget is a maison that is proud of the twofold jewellery and watchmaking expertise it has cultivated over the past 140 years, and continues to build on this grand tradition with surprising pieces such as the dazzling
Limelight Stella.