Abraham-Louis Breguet was granted his patent for the tourbillon on 26 June 1801, the 7th of Messidor in Year IX of the French revolutionary calendar. Two hundred and twenty-five years later to the day, Breguet has marked the anniversary with a quartet of tourbillons: one genuinely new model and three limited variations on watches already in the catalogue. It is the latest step in the steady revival of the range under chief executive Gregory Kissling.
The one that is actually new
The anniversary's centrepiece is also its least expensive, the Classique Tourbillon ref. 7357. It is the successor to the ref. 3350 of 1989, the watch that for most collectors is the archetypal Breguet tourbillon wristwatch, and it keeps that watch's deliberately small proportions: 35mm across and 9.2mm thick, in 18k Breguet gold or platinum. The dial is solid gold, hand-guilloche in classic Breguet style, but with Arabic numerals in place of the usual Romans.
Inside is the calibre 187B, derived from the Lemania-based movement of the old 3350 but reworked and modernised. The power reserve climbs to 60 hours, roughly half again as long as the original, and the tourbillon now carries a non-magnetic Nivachron hairspring and a silicon pallet lever for better resistance to magnetism. The tourbillon bridge has been redrawn with a more refined shape and finish, and the full bridge is decorated with a new guilloche pattern said to be inspired by a mountain near the manufacture in the Vallee de Joux. Crucially, the 7357 is regular production, not a limited edition, priced at CHF 140,000 in gold and CHF 154,000 in platinum, both excluding tax.
Three limited variations
The other three are cosmetic reworkings of existing models, but each is done well and each is aimed at a clearly different buyer.
The Classique Tourbillon Sideral 7255PT moves last year's gold model into platinum, keeping its black aventurine enamel dial, a fired enamel shot through with copper flecks that reads green at some angles. Its calibre 187M1 is Breguet's first-ever flying tourbillon, running 50 hours. Limited to 50 pieces, at CHF 223,000.
The Tradition Tourbillon 7047PT takes Breguet's recent fondness for blue further than any of the others. The off-centre time sub-dial is now Bleu de France fired enamel, and the same blue runs across the bridges, barrel and fusee, the tourbillon cage and even the links of the chain. The endstone over the tourbillon, normally a red ruby, is a blue spinel. The chain-and-fusee calibre 569 is mechanically unchanged at 55 hours; the watch is 41mm in platinum, limited to 25 pieces, at CHF 246,300.
The Marine Tourbillon Equation Marchante 5887PT is the most complicated of the four, pairing Breguet's ultra-thin automatic tourbillon with a perpetual calendar and a running equation of time in a 43.9mm platinum case. Its calibre 581DPE runs 80 hours. The draw is the dial: a tinted sapphire plate enamelled with luminous pigments, so that the constellations and moon it depicts are not decorative but a map of the sky over Paris on the night of 26 June 1801, the date Breguet filed his patent. It comes on a rubber strap at CHF 292,300 or a matching platinum bracelet at CHF 370,700, limited to 25 of each.
The read
Three of these four are variations on watches Breguet already sells, and the brand does not pretend otherwise. The piece that matters is the 7357. It is small, it is regular production, and it updates the 1989 archetype on its own terms rather than inflating it to modern proportions, which is the harder and more interesting choice. The pattern under Kissling is becoming familiar: Breguet keeps doing the unglamorous work of reworking its own back catalogue, and on this anniversary the tourbillon that costs the least is the one that says the most about where the brand is heading.
