A Classic Design from Vacheron Constantin Gets a Sharp Looking Midnight Blue Dial Treatment

This week, the Palexpo facility in Geneva, Switzerland, will become the center of the watch world for the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, or SIHH, a luxury watch show rivaled only by BaselWorld in relevance and prestige. We’ve got a team on the ground, there to bring you the most exciting releases. Follow our coverage here, and also be sure to check out Instagram. We’ll be posting to our feed throughout the week.

Upshot: Vacheron’s Patrimony is an all-time dress watch great — a benchmark for a clean, elegant dial and radiant beauty in its finished movement. True to this absolutely traditional approach, the Patrimony line has always been available in some shade of either white or black. Now, there’s a new option for the manual winding, self winding, and retrograde day-date versions: a dial in midnight blue with sunburst satin finishing.

Manual-Winding

Key Specs
Price:
Availability:
Movement: 1400
Winding: Manual
Case Diameter: 40mm
Case Thickness: 6.79mm
Water Resistance: 30 meters
Unique Features: Midnight blue dial with sunburst satin finish

Self-Winding

Key Specs
Price:
Availability:
Movement: 2450 Q6
Winding: Automatic
Case Diameter: 40mm
Case Thickness: 8.55mm
Water Resistance: 30 meters
Unique Features: Midnight blue dial with sunburst satin finish

Retrograde Day-Date

Key Specs
Price:
Availability:
Movement: 2460 R31R7/2
Winding: Automatic
Case Diameter: 42.5mm
Case Thickness: 9.7mm
Water Resistance: 30 meters
Unique Features: Midnight blue dial with sunburst satin finish; retrograde day-date display

Who It’s For: Dress watch lovers will be extremely excited to get any new version of the Patrimony—let alone one as gorgeous as this sunburst blue. And Vacheron has likely still managed to please purists, since otherwise the design is unchanged on all three versions: it remains simple, clean, and elegant in its new hue.

First Take: A deep blue dial on a dress watch is decidedly not radical. Nonetheless, adding a third color outside of very light or very dark shades lends an entirely new look to this iconic watch. Suddenly, its pink gold case and hands (two on the manual wind, three on the automatic) pop even more. And the depth added by the sunburst seems to lend even more space for the retrograde day-date display, which take up practically the entire dial but don’t feel in the least bit crowded — a wonderful feat of design.

Insight: All dress watch wearers are winners here: whether you’re ready to add a Big Three Swiss luxury watch to your collection or not, there’s a new benchmark for beauty under a tuxedo cuff to dream about.

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  All Of Our Coverage From SIHH 2019

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