Family affairs
In the wide central corridors, murmurs could be heard from the cosmopolitan crowd of ‘invited guests’, some standing around and others sitting at the restaurants. Before us stood the stands of two brands, side by side, belonging
to Luigi Macaluso: Girard-Perregaux and JeanRichard. We began with the younger of the two, JeanRichard, whose destiny was recently placed in the hands of one of Luigi’s sons, Massimo Macaluso. Serious but pleasant, the young man quickly gave a new impetus to the ‘niche’ brand, rapidly earning his independence by putting into place an autonomous young team (forty people, with an average age of 30 years) who will construct the basis of a long-term vision and strategy of the brand. Very focused on the product (“I don’t always want to follow marketing,” he declares), and on technical innovations, he has now begun to revitalize the brand by moving up-market, giving it renewed visibility, and by combining a certain modernity with a more marked technical approach than before. After reducing the number of references, he restructured the collections in a very clear manner. At the head of the list is the Paramount Square collection, equipped with a JR 1000 in-house movement, featuring a very original linear and vertical power reserve that gives the piece a futuristic touch. It is a proclamation of sorts.
On the feminine side, the TV Screen Milady combines the four elements with inventive stone-setting: a sea of sapphires for Water, billowy curves of diamonds for Air, layers of garnets for Earth, and rows of rubies for Fire. In this same emblematic collection, JeanRichard is developing, and will continue to develop in the future, its own sector of haute horlogerie with a selection of tourbillons, perpetual calendars, and minute repeaters that will soon be featured in the vaguely post-retro forms of the TV-Screens.
With 10,000 watches produced in 2004, JeanRichard has reached its goals. But, admits Massimo Macaluso, “the great challenge for 2005 is distribution. We have built our foundations, now is the time to construct a brand worthy of the name, combining avant-garde design and high quality watchmaking.” In time, the objective is to produce 25,000 watches, all equipped with calibres made by Sowind, the manufacture shared with Girard-Perregaux. The young man seems to have the vision, the energy and the support he needs to reach his goals.

Next door, Sylvie Rumo, the charming ambassador with a nice sense of humour, welcomed us into the salons of Girard-Perregaux. Launched last year, the aptly-named Cat's Eye women’s collection seems to be fulfilling its “educational” function of teaching women about the joys of the mechanical watch. With its oval dial, the Cat's Eye serenely combines decorative refinement and delicateness with mechanical poetry. The combination is even more dramatic this year with the introduction of the Cat's Eye Tourbillon whose single central bridge evokes the characteristic shape of the famous three golden bridge tourbillons made by Girard-Perregaux. Yet, this bold shape with sharp points goes perfectly well with the subtlety of the mother-of-pearl dial enhanced by a row of diamonds. Quite a success, indeed. Girard-Perregaux has thought long and hard, especially this year, about its ladies’ models, moving counter-current to the large watches seen on ads. The brand is presenting the tiny but ravishing Richeville Joaillerie, with its long horns covered in diamonds but whose small dial remains perfectly readable.
As for the men, while waiting for the product resulting from its partnership with the BMW Oracle team for the America's Cup, an original watch that will be unveiled on June 15 in Valencia, Spain, the brand is putting its efforts into its icon collection, Laureato, created in 1975. Redesigned to give it a new vitality, the Laureato Evo3 combines rose gold with leather or titanium with rubber. The excellent readability, subtle surface treatments, and boldness of forms make this watch one of the world’s ‘heavyweights’ in the up-market chronograph class.




Girard-Perregaux, JeanRichard, Parmigiani Fleurier


When the ‘kalpa’ is the measure
Our last visit at the SIHH took place at the Parmigiani Fleurier stand, where the new Kalpa Qualité Fleurier collection was presented. Hmm, I asked myself, what does “kalpa” meanı The answer to this question is definitely worth passing on to you, because it is representative of Michel Parmigiani’s refined and cultivated approach to haute horlogerie, which by its very nature and the beauty of its products, should also evoke philosophical reflection on the somewhat fathomless meaning of time.
In Buddhism, a ‘kalpa’ is a measure of time. Literally, one kalpa is a complete day/night cycle. But, when we think that it is a day/night cycle of the supreme Brahma, this cycle means a cumulated duration of eight million human lives… A kalpa, then, is eternity, or near eternity. It is the largest measure of time.
It is also what inspired Michel Parmigiani to want to make his pieces a measure of time that can defy the infinite cycle of the years. But, let’s start a bit more modestly by defying the time of one week with the lovely Kalpa XL Hebdomadaire. It has a power reserve of eight days (215 hours) and a highly readable and precise hand that indicates how much time is left. (Its patented-pending mechanism indicates the real-time arming of the spring, rather than the usual relationship to the gear.)
Another world first is the use of palladium in watchmaking. Up to now, palladium was too soft to work with, but a secret alloy, called Palladium 950 and developed by Johnson Matthey, has the necessary qualities to make it workable and machinable. In all its brilliant and natural white glory, the new Palladium 950 is the star of the Kalpa Grande Palladium.
Let’s turn now to another world first, but this time in the classically formal Toric collection, which is receiving a number of in-house complications to become the Toric Perpetual Calendar Corrector and the Minute Repeater. As we know, the precise adjustment of the indexing and functions in a perpetual calendar is often difficult. In this case, Parmigiani Fleurier has succeeded in developing an automatic system of levers and cams integrated into the middle-case that regroups all of the corrections (retrograde date, day, month, leap years, lunar phases) in one pushbutton, the Corrector, situated at 2 o’clock. Thanks to the Corrector, all of the functions can be placed in phase with each other, adjusting the number of days according to the number of times the pushbutton is pressed.
Isn’t it by trying all these interesting innovations, that we finally reach our most distant ‘kalpa’ı

For my part, after these exhausting two weeks of watch shows, we put away our own trusty watch and went to sleep for more than 100 ‘kalpas’.

BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 1
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 2
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 3
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 4
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 5
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 6


Source: June -July 2005 Issue

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