With one foot on the ground, an eye on the sky and its head in the stars, the 2019 collection from Girard-Perregaux looks set to be one of the watchmaker’s biggest and most coherent for quite some time. Everything, from the booth and showcases to the watches themselves, is infused with a single all-encompassing theme: Earth to Sky. The idea is to bring a celestial, astronomical inspiration to models both old and new. The conversation is of light and shade, revelation, orbits and incandescent materials.
The first product on this theme is the Cosmos, a tourbillon from the Neo Bridges repertoire. It features a terrestrial globe for GMT and a globe of the firmament for the star map. A luminescent dial depicts star trails, as they appear in nocturnal time-lapse images. The result is accomplished, grand, impressive and best appreciated in the dark.
Girard-Perregaux’ remaining creations are on the theme of Black and Blue. Black like the cosmos, blue like planet Earth; these are coloured variants of models from the company’s current collections, given an Earth to Sky makeover. With their black DLC cases, blue dials, straps in one colour or the other, and movement elements picked out in the relevant shade, the effect is highly contemporary. The same goes for the more conservative models, such as the 40 mm 1966, or the more customised watches such as the Neo Bridges, which lends itself perfectly to a DLC titanium treatment.
Even the Cat’s Eye has been passed through the Earth to Sky filter. The most striking and probably the most stylistically successful interpretation is the rose gold model with a blue aventurine dial. A convincing night sky contrasts with the warm-toned gold, and the icy diamonds are like closer, more visible and brighter stars.
