OPEN SEASON

13th February 2025

Switzerland’s finest are wearing their ticking hearts on your sleeve: showcasing and augmenting their finishers’ unmatched skillset of skeletonisation and flawless polish by wrenching open the dial – or losing it altogether – thus rendering the movement’s mechanics as a veritable flea circus for the wrist. Roll up, roll up, beckons Alex Doak and roll up your sleeves for an architectural descent into centuries-proven micro-engineering genius.

Do not adjust your sets: for once the price is listed, and we haven’t added a zero by accident. More to the point, it’s rather good value (if you can afford the thrice-yearly service bills). Young, agile, disruptive, yet hardcore-horological Hublot and its ‘MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System Titanium’ may fall short in the nomenclature department, but never doubt the virtuoso execution of this wilfully divisive… watch? No dial, hands or oscillating winding weight, instead a roller display, a circular power reserve and an inclined tourbillon wound by two linear ‘shuttle’ weights, shrouded by a biomorphic sapphire canopy. Definitely a watch, we think.

The piece has no dial: Hublot has fused the calibre with the dial. The movement is the face and soul of the watch. The gaze is drawn directly to the mechanism to read the time. The MP-10 features a highly architectural design and a particularly expressive movement built around volume and depth. Yet, this in no way interferes with reading. Instead, it makes it simpler. The time is read from top to bottom, fluidly and naturally.

The power reserve is particularly expressive, with a two-tone disc (red and green) set coaxially to the hours and minutes.

This design eliminates the traditional space constraints, which are usually dictated by a central display in a horizontal plane. The MP-10 can be easily read vertically: hours, minutes, power reserve then seconds. The movement of the eye is fluid and natural. The indications are aligned. They share the same white lacquer typography on black aluminium rollers. For each indication, the current time is read via a red triangular marker.

Hublot MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System. 82845 | £238,000

HUBLOT watches are available online and at ROX Glasgow.

Just as enthral to Mexico’s notorious Carrera Panamericana road race as Porsche themselves, Jack Heuer so-named his revolutionary driver’s watch in the very same year as the German sports car marque did its rear-engined coupé.

It took over half a century for the respective namesakes to start capitalising on their shared origin story, but meanwhile each has forged a legacy of icons in their own right. As for Jack’s conception, hot on the tyretracks of Autavia and paving the way for Monaco, Silverstone et al., the TAG Heuer ‘Carrera’, like the 911 ‘Carrera’ is a family of chronographs fit for trackside and quayside besides. It was the crucible of Switzerland’s first self-winding ‘stopwatch watch’, and remains the purest of its class.

This year’s new assortment comprises of four chronographs and two chronograph tourbillons – “where technicity seamlessly converges with preciousness”, according to HQ. Swinglish aside, it’s all about the titanium/ceramic case construct, integrating one container and two barrels on the side, with seamless merging of materials and… well, a merge, of chassis and engine.

On the one side, a hollowed structure with a sandblasted finish imparts a dynamic, yet sophisticated aesthetic – echoing the adrenaline-fuelled spirit of motorsport. Then, taking centrestage the distinctive skeleton dial, ingeniously reimagined for better legibility. The intricate pattern, now featuring bold black lines, ensures effortless readability while concealing subtle elements like a shield anchored at its centre, a subtle nod to the brand’s iconic logo. This configuration invites enthusiasts to delve deeper into its mechanical allure.

Like popping the bonnet, in other words.

TAG Heuer Carrera Chrono Extreme Sport. 83575 | £7,150

TAG Heuer watches are available online and at ROX Newcastle.

As we’ve come to expect from modern watchmaking’s genuine renaissance brand, here’s another monumental fusion of Italian artistry and Swiss expertise that manages to command a lightness of touch with gravitas.

A full 110 wafer-thin facets of the ziggurat ‘Octo Finissimo’ case – rendered this time in 40mm’s worth of diaphanous rose gold, which frames an ultra-thin movement (2.50 mm thick) that nonetheless packs eight full days of punch (‘tick’). Its sinuous anthracite-black, PVD-coated skeletonised bridges play with the warm tones of the case with woozy romantic allure.

Elizabeth Taylor would be treated to something Bulgari by Richard Burton every time they visited Rome together. But for once, this watch seems like something Burton would treat himself.

Bulgari Octo Finissimo Skeleton. 81017 | £35,100

Bulgari watches are available online and at ROX Glasgow.

With Alpine Eagle, Chopard has recreated a contemporary ‘sporty-chic’ collection that moves well-and-truly on from its Eighties’ ‘St Moritz’ in all its Kodachrome glitziness with pure class. Bulked up, but sophisticated in its tension of case facets – much like Hublot’s Big Bang, only… well, Chopard – it now welcomes a new ultra-thin timepiece providing full visibility across the entire intricate mechanical workings of L.U.C Calibre 96.17-S.

This movement measures a mere 3.30 millimetres thick, featuring subtly openworked components in an elegant play on contrast in materials and all the refined hand-finish we’ve come to expect from co-President, Karl-Friedrich Scheufele’s baby, ‘L.U.C’ – a crack horological hothouse high in the Jura mountains.

The skeleton work in all its DeLorean-esque cool boasts a concentric pattern that draws your eyes into the inner innovation so often hidden from view: black rhodium-plated bridgework to create a new contrast that highlights the gilded gear trains.

The 41 mm-diameter titanium case benefits from the extreme lightness of a metal, still – in the true mountaineering spirit of Alpine Eagle – boasting tried and tested water resistance.

Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 XP TT. £23,900

Chopard watches are available online and at ROX Glasgow.

CONTINUE READING

For him, or for her? Does it really matter any more..? Even sheltered Switzerland is peeping above its parapet of surrounding Jura mountain crests, growing less and less categoric in cataloguing a watch these days.

Jack Heuer’s brilliantly legible motorist’s chronograph careers onward, six decades young.

A force to be reckoned with. Instantly recognisable luxury credentials combined with durability means bold gold is here to stay.