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.
Key Specs
Price: $287,800
Availability: TDB
Movement: Lange & Sohnë Calibre L952.2
Winding: Manual
Case Diameter: 41.5mm
Case Thickness: 14.6mm
Case Material: White gold
Unique Features: Tourbillon with stop seconds; flyback chronograph; perpetual calendar
Upshot: A Lange & Sohnë has a storied history of making some of the most earth-shatteringly beautiful watches a guy can put on his wrist. And that history continues with the new salmon-colored edition of the Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon, a highly complicated stunner originally released with a black dial configuration in 2016. But it would be hard for, well, anyone to make Pretty in Pink jokes about the most complicated member of the broader Datograph line. There’s a definite depth to this model that isn’t immediately apparent looking at the previous iteration. Rendered in this warm, bright shade, all of this watch’s tricks are on display.
Who It’s For: The small handful of people who can actually get their hands on one of these watches will undoubtedly prize a highly complicated timepiece and its attendant rarity — and this one offers an impressive combination of both of these features. Like the previous model, only 100 pieces of the white-gold Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon will be made. The new case is made from white gold, instead of platinum. And its list of features reads long: there’s the flyback chronograph, the perpetual calendar and its moonphase, the tourbillon with stop seconds and the power reserve indicator sitting at the end of the tachymeter scale.
All of this is the product of a movement that Lange spent 17 years perfecting, starting with the original Datograph model in 1999. Serious collectors who missed out on the first round of Datograph Perpetual Tourbillons will appreciate the chance to own a piece of this brand’s history.
First Take: Generally speaking, it’s easier to get excited about brand new models than it is about updates to the material fabrications of existing ones. But it’s a lot harder for a small watch brand to change the case and dial materials on a high-end piece of mechanical engineering than it is for, say, a big sneaker company to offer a traditionally white leather sneaker in taupe suede. So while we like seeing watch brands invest time, energy and resources into things we haven’t seen before, we also like it when they make smart — and not-so-subtle — changes to existing models. This is an example of such a change that’s worth getting excited about.
