It's not its calling, nor is it its identity, to which it remains staunchly true. L.U.C is not a sporty watch collection, however chic you want to call it. It is a dress watch entity as this year's novelties perfectly show. Inside its Watches & Wonders Geneva booth, they still refrain from using bracelets or rubber straps. Except the one piece in its catalog, from resorting to titanium and any sports reference. And if this gathering of classic timepieces, united by a common sense of elegance and craft, still uses steel with a grain of salt, this material is gaining ground.
If it's an ultra-thin watch, with a micro-rotor movement, a gold, guilloché dial with a salmon finish, one might imagine it's made of a precious metal. But L.U.C went for steel with the latest edition in the 1860 line. It's even more prestigious than these features indicate as it's Geneva Hallmark-certified. It's not the first time steel gets the ultimate treatment by Chopard. But this is not just any steel we're talking about. It's their own Lucent Steel A223, a proprietary alloy that's harder to work with and shinier than the other, run-of-the-mill steels out there. And the result is a crazy beautiful piece that's no highway robbery.
Its beauty rests on a simple recipe, made of two ingredients. The first one is a rose gold dial. In this case, this means it's made of solid gold, and that its original color has been altered to pink, a specific hue that resembles salmon, a common thread among Chopard's 2023 novelties. What's more, said gold is guilloché : four engraved outlines separate the various functional areas of the dial: minute track, small seconds and central medallion. The latter receives a wave pattern centered on the Chopard logo at 12 o'clock.
The second one is the size of L.U.C 1860. With 36.5 mm in diameter, Chopard has chosen what seems to be the smallest diameter acceptable for a men's watch. It wears beautifully vintage, in an understated elegance style that is integral to L.U.C.
One could argue that the L.U.C Heritage Chrono is a sporty chic timepiece. But in actuality, it's just retro chic. Any sporty attribute this watch may display is not enough to turn this hand-wound, Geneva Hallmark chronograph into a sports accessory...although it would ideally match an old Mercedes coup', or an British Green XK140, or a contemporary vehicle for that matter.
Seen from the back, all 25 pieces Chopard has planned look just gorgeous. The brand called upon their manufacture integrated chronograph movement, with rose gold and rhodium finishings that enhance its sense of depth. It's also a very modern engine, very thoroughly developed and designed with exactly the right type of curves and bevels a watch geek demands.
