Breguet Night - Watch Collectors' Club

This was a fantastic evening at Breguet's New Bond St boutique. We were spread out over 3 floors, with plenty to try on and some great technical demonstrations.

I've been once before but this was the first evening event we've had.

Stuart, the boutique manager, delivered a great talk on the history of Breguet and how technological innovation has been a continuous thread from Abraham-Louis Breguet himself to the modern collection.

The Tradition is probably my favourite of the collection, bringing the pocket watch signatures of Breguet to a wrist watch. Everything is visible on the dial, with only a simple rotor to see at the back. The guilloché dial is beautiful, with blued Breguet hands. Each is individually numbered at the six o'clock position, with a retrograde seconds hand that springs back underneath.

Here are some more examples!

The Classique Chronométrie 7727 was the star of the show for most of us, I've linked an article and jotted down some specs here.

This boasts 6 different types of guilloché on the dial. The movement is even more curious, beating at 10hz with a 2-second hand spinning on top of the sub-seconds dial.

We were given a demonstration of how the magnetic pivots operate above and below the silicon double balance and escapement. These models run at about £3,000 themselves and make a lovely noise as they tick!

This part of the event was great, Stuart used a microscope to get the mother of all macro shots. Here you can see the Chronométrie movement. The bevelling is so consistent and the finishing is all the better up close.

My Baltic did the best it could! £500 vs £44,500 right here.

The Classique range is brilliant at keeping things subtle, it's very much a watch to please the owner, rather than something that would be known at all to the wider public as any sort of status symbol.

This time-only example from club cofounder Ed, was worn on his wedding day, alongside his wife's matching one! This lets the guilloché dial shine through, with a gorgeously finished micro-rotor movement powering it behind the dial.

The Marine range are really interesting to look at, with rubber and leather strap options. The wave dial is very well executed, particularly with the mother-of-pearl dial. All 3 show much more movement in the light than any wave pattern dial I've seen.

Having invented the first wristwatch for the queen of Naples at the time, La Reine de Naples is a luxurious women's watch. The shape is distinctive and rather large! Whoever says women's watches should have small dimensions wasn't paying attention to the history books.

The Heritage line have elongated tonneau shapes, the tourbillon example has a really creative way of stretching the numerals around the aperture for the tourbillon. The women's watch to the right has an equally inspired approach to its moonphase complication, peeking out from the top-right corner.

The Classique Complications line is definitely where the watchmakers at Breguet get to flex their prowess. I'd have to imagine the only reason that Breguet isn't included alongside the holy trinity as a quartet, is the acquisition by the Swatch group. They absolutely should be up there, in my opinion. Half of watchmaking today stems from Breguet's inventions in some way. They're still filing tens of patents a year too!

The longer you look at a Breguet, the better it gets. The staff were incredibly helpful and knowledgeable, watches like these are best accompanied by a guide! Every little piece of history and modern development gets pointed out and celebrated, it was an absolute joy of an evening. Maybe one day!