Chopard LUC Full Strike Sapphire

An all-sapphire watch is unusual for Chopard. It makes more sense on the realisation that it is a minute repeater tuned by Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, a renowned violinist and cellist duo – and friends of Chopard co-president Karl-Friedrich Scheufele – and overseen by Professor Romain Boulandet, head of the Applied Acoustics Laboratory at the Geneva School of Landscape, Engineering and Architecture. This musical and engineering one-two resulted in the LUC Full Strike Sapphire (price upon request), one of three chiming watches that are Chopard’s highlight releases this year. The monobloc sapphire crystal gongs are an evolution of the system that bagged Chopard the top prize at the 2017 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) awards, and combined with sapphire crystal, caseband and crown – and the input of the aforementioned experts – it chimes louder, longer and purer. It is limited to only five pieces.