Round-UpIt’s Complicated This Valentine’s Day: Watches To ‘Uncomplicate’ Your Life
Unlike the drama of complicated relationships, we tend to prefer the complexity of complicated watches. These six pieces offer you a web of complex functionality, but only in order to put your needs first, as sheer treats of timekeeping and self-indulgence
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Yes, life is complicated. But complications in love take the cake, and your peace of mind. The parasitic nature of dysfunctional relationships is that despite numerous warnings, trips to the therapist or your nearest watering hole, you keep going back for more like moth to a flame, which can only end badly. Complicated watches, on the other hand, have just one goal: to uncomplicate your life. Yet, the literal meaning of ‘complicated’ is one of those life’s oxymoron tragedies that brings to mind American linguist Richard Lederer’s famous rant: “There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple…”
A complicated watch aims to please you. In horological terminology, a timepiece indicating only hours, minutes and seconds is called simple movement. Timepiece features that offer you more than this basic timekeeping are termed as complications. There is no room for jealousy, negging, selfish motives, drama, half-hearted efforts, or the word we dread when we want more: ‘situationship’. The intent is to keep the relationship harmonious, to help you complete tasks such as informing you when it’s time to take the dinner out of the oven, wish your parents on their wedding anniversary, drink those eight glasses of water every day, achieve your desired aerobic output, etc. Even your heart (rate) is in good hands.
Here is a list of six more focused suitors that will help you put your needs first and love yourself more.
H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner Perpetual Calendar
Your Rock In Any Storm
This watch from the Streamliner collection appears like the storm brewing under a cold war after an argument in a volatile relationship; a predicament made after considering the minimalist aesthetic of its perpetual calendar. Its grey fumé dial with sunburst pattern, with red and white on an outer minute track, is a breezy, no-strings-attached answer to most other mechanical renditions of this complication. This minimalist trait began from Perpetual 1 or calibre HMC 341, the brand’s first edition calendar. The latest 42mm steel model has a cushion-shaped case with rounded edges that pay obeisance to the first streamliners or high-speed trains of the 1920s and 30s.
Calendar complications are usually bang on practical, but not on this model. The date aperture at 4:30 is angled so as to make the numerals tilt at 26 degrees and the ‘flash calendar’ system allows for instantaneous date changing at 12:00am every night. This means two superimposed discs operate in succession: dates 1 to 15, followed by 16 to 31. An added benefit is a leap year indicator placed behind the hand-wound calibre HMC 812 movement. The 3D watch hands with Globolight inserts also play a role. Twelve white-decal hour markers are indicative of months, and a short, red-and-white central hand points to one of such indices to indicate the right month. The watch promises 168 hours as the power reserve and keeps its word; an indicator at 10 o’clock being proof.
Bovet Fleurier Virtuoso V Salmon
Fulfils Your Every Fantasy
This 43.5mm Bovet model takes role playing to the next level to keep you hooked throughout, unlike the dysfunctional relationship/s you might have had. The title ‘Virtuoso’ means highly skilled, and to fulfil your every dream (of owning all kinds of timepieces), the watch literally bends over backwards and shapeshifts from a wristwatch to a pocket watch and a table clock.
Inbuilt with the patented Amadéo system, the watch accommodates two dials with separate hours and minutes. In other words, you get a secondary time zone to stay abreast of local time in foreign lands without checking your phone’s clock app. To eliminate any pending doubts, you may have about the relationship, the model ensures that the complications of jumping hours and retrograde minutes are in sync.
Louis Moinet Time to Race
Getting Closer By The Day
The Louis Moinet legacy of chronographs demonstrates that with consistency, persistence and hard work, your relationship can only grow, evolve and get stronger with time. For instance, the eponymous watchmaker Louis Moinet (1768-1853) in 1816 invented the world’s first chronograph or ‘Compteur de Tierces’ in a pocket watch to trace ‘apparent motion’ or movement of the stars, and measure time at 1/60th per second running at 2,16,000vph. The 2016 Memoris Spirit range was a step up, and now their latest chronograph, Time To Race, has evolved to become a highly personalised and technical timepiece. The 40.7mm watch has a preformed rubber strap—in racing green to represent England, rosso corsa or red for Italy, and bleu de France for France. These are the national colours of the three countries who participated in motorsport racing till the late 1960s.
The central element, however, is the chronograph, which makes you feel exclusive. For masquerading as an hour and minute sub-dial at six o’clock, is a circular placard for collectors to flaunt their lucky number (1 to 99). Collectors can customise their combination of number and colour, and Louis Moinet promise that your chosen combination will be exclusively yours. Additionally, the bicompax design accommodates two more sub-dials situated at nine and three o’clock. The column wheel and its lateral clutch is at 12 o’clock. A single pusher at two o’clock on the satin-brushed grade-5 titanium case, operates the sub-dials. The rehaut or the ring along the dial’s periphery, shows both, the 60s chronograph track and tachymeter scale—made from sturdy neoralithe with the first quarter in the colours of the watch.
The watch houses the automatic calibre LM96 with an original dial-side display, and along with its column wheel and horizontal clutch, there are 147 components of the chronograph. The movement is visible through the caseback which flaunts a guilloche clous de Paris (hobnail) rotor adorned with a fleur de lys, perlage, diamond-polished sinks, etc. Beating at 4Hz, the watch delivers a reasonable 48-hour power reserve. A high-domed panoramic sapphire crystal offers both close ups and well-rounded views of the mechanism.
Girard-Perregaux WW.TC 1966
Shows You The World, Minus The Tears And Drama
This watch promises to bring the world at your feet, unlike clingy, narcissistic lovers that demand you make them your entire world. Aiming to get with each edition, especially after the previous editions of the World Wide Time Control or WW. TC weren’t exactly crowd-pleasers for the over-crowding the dial with the date and chronograph modules, this 1966 edition does not incorporate both features together.
It is a fairly decluttered monochromatic version with a clean, non-complex dial. Armed with the GP03300 world-time calibre, this 46-hour automatic movement runs a rotating 24-hour disc with the names of 24 time zone-representative cities. Here, the hour and minute hands rotate on 12-hour basis, while the inner disc showing day and night rotates on a 24-hour basis, making for a quick, and mostly reliable reference point for all 24 time zones, in sync with the current time zone of the wearer. A small seconds sub-dial at six o’clock completes.
Arnold & Son Nebula 41.5
Your Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Yes, the Nebula 41.5 holds many mysteries in its complex, open-worked dial; where diametrically opposing steel bridges, rhodium plated appliqués and balance wheels align with the blue PVD flange connectors, outer minute ring, parts of the caseback and the blue rubber strap in beautiful symmetry.
And yes, the name Nebula (Latin for cloud of gas/dust in outer space) befuddles. But unlike the many dirty secrets you found in your ex lover’s possession, who instead of apologising, continued to gaslight you … the Nebula makes you privy to its elements one by one if you ask nicely. Its A&S5201 calibre, matching the blue palette, also manages a slim, almost unnoticeable small seconds sub-dial at seven o’clock. The reverse face is awash with ‘rayons de la gloire’ (or rays of glory) finishes and wavy sunray-brushing on the surface.
Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance Special edition Guilloché Dial
Completing Each Other’s Sentences
Not on the same page, still feeling single, going in opposite directions, and other litany of such grouses are the usual grouses of couples where discord is constant. ‘Resonance’, on the other hand, happens when two people appear joined at the hip, even mirror each other’s actions.
As noticed in this Armin Strom model in rose gold, equipped with the ARF15 hand-wound movement, are two independent movements that along with their mainsprings, gear trains, and regulators, function in tandem. They have each other’s back as any slipup by one movement is instantly corrected by the other. The two are connected by the Resonance Clutch Spring that encourages this meeting of mind and body. To adjust the resonance, use the pusher above the crown.
Shop The Story
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H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner
6812-1200
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Bovet Fleurier
ACHS048
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Girard-Perregaux 1966
49557-11-132-BB6C
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Louis Moinet Mechanical Wonders
LM-96.20.8VF
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Arnold & Son Nebula
1NEAS.B01A.D134S
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Armin Strom Resonance
RF61.5N.AL.M.40.CL
