Anyone new to the watch world may feel out of their depth when confronted with two models that are clearly aimed at the more seasoned collector, but help is at hand. Chopard’s collections evolve in a gradual and coherent fashion; by tracing each collection’s “family tree”, the path they have followed becomes clear.
Step back in time
To begin at the beginning. In 2013 Chopard presented a perpetual calendar complication with a tourbillon. Six years later, in 2019, it reprised its tourbillon, this time as a flying tourbillon which is, put simply, a traditional tourbillon without an upper bridge, which makes it far more visually expressive.
The first watch unveiled today is a culmination of both these approaches, namely a perpetual calendar with flying tourbillon. Like its predecessors, it joins the L.U.C collection, hence its name, the L.U.C Flying T Twin Perpetual. Interestingly, and perhaps most impressively, it comes with a 40.5mm diameter.
This is a bold choice on Chopard’s part. The Manufacture housed its first perpetual calendar in a 45mm case and its flying tourbillon in a 40mm case. It would, of course, have been simpler to opt for the 45mm diameter, but tastes have changed, and so Chopard has tackled this watch by its steepest slope and fitted the 319 components of its perpetual calendar into the tourbillon’s case. This is already an achievement and more so given that the watch’s six-millimetre height must accommodate the twin stacked barrels that guarantee 65 hours of power reserve. But it is an effort worth making in order to keep the perpetual calendar running without the need to adjust its many indications too frequently.
Demonstrating the characteristic precision of a Chopard watch, the L.U.C Flying T Twin Perpetual is chronometer-certified and features a stop-seconds mechanism, which halts the movement so the time can be set with maximum accuracy.
The happy couple
The second model follows the exact same principle of reunification: that of an astronomical moon phase complication, a feature of Chopard’s collections since 2005, and the perpetual calendar movement introduced in 2013. Together they form the L.U.C Lunar One.
It, too, is chronometer-certified and, like the L.U.C Flying T Twin Perpetual, hallmarked Poinçon de Genève. The case is an identical 40.5mm, again in ethical gold. All the dials are finished with hand-executed guilloché, magnificently distinguished by Chopard’s preference for a pattern that radiates not from the centre, as is usual, but from 6 o’clock… the position of the moon phase or the flying tourbillon.
These are watches for the aesthete, completed by a large date window at 12 o’clock and in a trio of original colours, with Forest Green, Deep Blue or Salmon Pink. While there is no such thing as perfection, these L.U.C perpetual calendars with flying tourbillon or moon phase come very close.
