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The third edition of the LVMH Watch Week is a feast of horology, paired with a sprinkling of magic.
Now in its third year, the LVMH Watch Week has become a highly anticipated, year-opening horological event. The group’s portfolio of timepiece brands is concentrated and heavyhitting. As always, Bulgari presented several headturners that showcase both great technicity and exquisite jewellery crafts. Hublot was somewhat more conservative as its high-tech materials took a back seat to classic yellow gold. Zenith’s dual qualities of heritage and futurism was on full display. Here are the highlights.
Bulgari Serpenti Misteriosi High Jewellery Secret Watches
Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo and its record-breaking, boundarypushing ultra-thin movements have been given a rest, for now, only to add another milestone in horological miniaturisation.
The new Piccolissimo movement is one of the smallest existing mechanical movements and is presented in several expressions of the Serpenti Misteriosi secret watch. The snake head, which opens to reveal the watch face, with its sinuous, coiling bracelet, has been an icon since the 1950s, and the new movement is a modern reflection of the tiny ladies’ watch calibres of that era. Calibre BVL 100 is a mere 12.3mm in diameter, 2.50mm thick, and the entirety of the 102-component movement is just 1.3g. In the meantime, the gold bracelets are decorated as lavishly as ever, with gems for eyes, and scales that are either gem-set or delicately filled with lacquer.
The movement took about two and a half years to develop, which is a remarkably short time for one that stretches the limits of watchmaking, but Bulgari’s watchmakers benefit from the experience of the Octo Finissimo. The design may be new, but the equipment and other production processes were carried over. In that sense, the Piccolissimo is the culmination of a decade of work in horological miniaturisation.
Bulgari Octo Roma Grande Sonnerie
“What is my purpose?” asks Antoine Pin, the managing director of Bulgari’s watch division. “What is my promise to you, the customer, that nobody else can propose?” One of the answers is the new Octo Roma Grande Sonnerie, an ostentatious, simultaneous display of the maison’s high watchmaking and high jewellery crafts. Inside, the self-winding, tourbillon-regulated, 732-component calibre BVL 703 has a four-hammer Westminster chiming mechanism that took nine months to assemble by a single master watchmaker. On the outside, the dial and white gold case is set with 445 baguette-cut Zambian emeralds and diamonds, totalling over 30 carats.
Pin calls the watch “crazy” and “some kind of nonsense” in its no-compromise approach. There are very few manufactures that would dare create a timepiece that is so extravagant in both decoration and complication. “We are placing the ball where no one can grab it,” he says. “I love this idea that we basically develop a field where no one can join us.”
Bulgari’s Neuchatel-based watch manufacture has a resume that speaks for itself, but unique propositions such as the Octo Roma Grande Sonnerie are a reminder that an unfiltered, holistic Bulgari experience will involve gemstones. “We are truly Italian, we are truly jewellers, and you should feel it one way or another in our product,” Pin says.