Though Baume & Mercier has been with the Richemont Group since 1988 (back then, Richemont was called the Vendôme Group), the maison has always had an identity of its own, rooted in interpreting traditional craftmanship in a contemporary nature. Their new launches in 2020, most revealed through Watches & Wonder’s digital platform, show a clear continuation of their mission to offer modern, finely crafted timepieces to a new generation of emergent clients.
For this first half of 2020, Baume & Mercier chose to enrich two of their iconic collections: the Clifton Baumatic and the Hampton. Revealed in drips since the beginning of the year, with the Clifton Baumatic Day-Date Moonphase joining the family last month, Baume & Mercier unveils two new watches following the Day-Date’s footsteps: the Baumatic Moon-phase Date and Baumatic COSC. The former features a white dial with a porcelain finish in a 42mm satin polished stainless-steel case, with a moon-phase set against a starry sky displayed at 6 o’clock. The moon-phase doubles as the date, with a hand pointing to the numbers 1 to 31 circling the display.
The COSC-certified Clifton Baumatic date is a significantly paired down piece, displaying only the hours, minutes, seconds and date on a dial choice of gradated grey or a warm white with porcelain finish. Available in two sizes (39mm or 40mm) and in a choice of three metals (steel, two-tone steel and steel topped with gold, or 18K rose gold), this model completes the Clifton Baumatic collection with one of the most affordable (depending on the case metal you choose, of course) mechanical COSC-certified watches on the luxury market.
Those with a penchant for something less classic will likely find something in the more contemporary, rectangular Hampton collection—an ode to an interesting era for the maison. Established as Baume & Mercier in Geneva during the roaring 1920’s, the brand fully embraced Art Deco as a pillar for their aesthetic codes: splashes of bold colours, luxurious materials, straight lines and geometric symmetry.
As a call-back to that era (appropriate to celebrate a 1920’s art movement in 2020), the maison is showcasing all those aesthetic codes in their new Hampton models. A rectangular, stainless-steel watch available in three sizes—small (35 x 22.2 mm), medium (43 x 27.5 mm), and large (48 x 31 mm)—the new Hampton is all symmetry and thoughtful proportions. Arabic numerals adorn the dials along with riveted indices and sword-shaped hands. The small models feature a new generation quartz movement optimised to be reliable for seven years and are available with either an opaline silver dial or a white mother-of-pearl dial set with 4 brilliant-cut diamonds.
The medium and large models have a grey and black minute track circling the dial, a distinct characteristic of Art Deco design, and house an automatic movement, its oscillating weight decorated with the “Côtes de Genève” pattern visible through the open caseback. The large model, having more room to work with, also has a version featuring a large date and a dual time zone and day/night indicator at 6 o’clock.
All these models show a wide variety, a watch for every occasion and budget, with prices ranging from CHF 1,300 to CHF 3,650.
Completing their star collections to make them fully fleshed, the new Clifton Baumatic and Hampton models are a testament to Baume & Mercier (and by extension the Richemont Group) focusing on a growing segment of the population looking to learn more about the marriage of craftmanship and technology in watchmaking. While it’s unlikely that Baume & Mercier will enter the competitive realm of multi-complication, record-breaking watches, they’re also not aiming for that—what they vie for is to be a person’s first or second watch, and in this industry in this day and age, that’s just as important.
