Every year fashion turns a page, reinventing and reinterpreting itself in a thousand different ways. And every year it never fails to seduce. At this year’s Baselworld, blue seems to be the colour of choice. Light blue, sky blue, royal blue... we will be seeing a lot more of this elegant and sophisticated shade on well-dressed wrists this year.
Graff – The Princess Butterfly
Jewellery house Graff brings sophistication and femininity with its Princess Butterfly. Inspired by the shape of a butterfly’s wings, the watch sparkles with precious sapphires and diamonds. It is also technically innovative: the mother-of-pearl dial measures a diminutive 17 mm – something rarely seen in watchmaking these days – and the dial is concealed by the butterfly’s wings, which protect the mechanical heart. A simple mechanism opens the wings, and the time is revealed. The high-quality workmanship and precise engineering took the company’s artisans many months to complete, and the finished product is the result of a stringent design and testing process, including 3D testing for the butterfly wing mechanism. Graff can be justifiably proud of its new timepiece, which comes with satin or leather strap.
Chopard – Precious Chopard
Precious gems and watchmaking excellence come together in this new and utterly feminine timepiece. The Precious Chopard is a symphony of white diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and rubies. Blue pear-cut sapphires and brilliant-cut pastel-coloured diamonds are married with white diamonds around the bezel, creating a lacy and ethereal frame for the dial, whose contrasting baguette-cut sapphires form a solid backdrop for a flower motif, snow-set with yet more sapphires and diamonds. The gem-set bracelet continues the same sophisticated theme. This delicate and luminous offering from the Geneva manufacture is part of a special Precious Chopard collection which also includes a pair of earrings and a ring. All three together would be perfect for a very special ladies’ evening.
Hermès - Faubourg Manchette
The Parisian fashion house has come up with a ladies’ watch that is both feminine and imposing. The Faubourg Manchette, a leather cuff-style watch, is an ode to the brand’s signature material. The saddle-maker has fashioned the cuff from selected pieces of leather, saddle-stitched with three double stitches at each end for extra strength. The leather is buffed, threaded, stamped and waterproofed in a multi-stage process, making it like a second skin as the cuff flows around the wrist. The watch case, fitted with a quartz movement, nestles seamlessly into the leather cuff. The bezel of the 19.5 mm gold case, by the Hermès watch manufacture, is hand-set with 36 baguette-cut diamonds.
