By Harlan Chapman-Green
Breguet is my favourite watch company of all times, in case you didn’t know that. So I thought it would be the perfect way to close off my coverage of this year’s Baselworld international watch showcase. Don’t worry! There’s still a couple of days left of the show in Basel, Switzerland, so you can still sneak in and have a wander around, also, we’re still going to be covering it here on WristReview right up until the minute the doors officially close, even then we have some roundup articles in the making too!
Breguet is one of those companies that’s just up there with the best, and it’s been that way for a long long time now. Since the company’s inception in France in 1775, it’s been responsible for some of the most revolutionary inventions the world of horology has ever seen. French Queen Marie Antoinette had a particular fascination with the mechanical delights that Abraham-Louis Breguet came up with, particularly his method for ensuring the watch runs forever (the first perpetual watch) and the globally renowned tourbillon escapement. Breguet made the first ever watch worn on the wrist as a request for a wealthy client in Paris, a trend which Cartier would later make the norm thanks to their Tank model. Who says the French haven’t done anything for our planet?
In 2011 the Classique Hora Mundi 5717 watch which gained many awards for its unique complications and design and such. That watch was recognisable thanks to its world time features as well as the hand finished dial that has a map of whichever continent the watch was sold in. The new 5727 watch does away with this system and instead replaces it with hobnail guilloche that’s been completed by hand on an extremely old machine in the Breguet manufacture in Switzerland.
The new Classique Hora Mundi 5727 watch features the same mechanism and complications as the 5717 watches, this is still one of the only watches with an instant jumping time zone system that is connected to all of the other complications which are the date, the city indicator and the 24-hour indicator. One press of the pusher at 8 O’clock adjusts all of them, saving the owner the hassle of changing things when they go on holiday, imagine what it would be like if you’re going to the other side of the planet every few days and you constantly need to adjust everything on your watch, Breguet’s done us a real favour here.
The handcrafted in-house calibre 77F0 runs at 4Hz and has a power reserve of 55 hours and is automatically winding. The 5727 will cost you $68,000 in rose gold and $69,100 in white gold when it goes on sale soon.
For more info, please visit breguet.com
HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN – MANAGING EDITOR
A keen bass guitar player, Harlan enjoys all the perks modern watchmaking technologies the industry has to offer. Although you might catch him sampling Omegas or the “odd” Rolex, Harlan loves all things Haute Horology, with his three favourite brands being Breguet, A.Lange & Söhne and Vacheron Constantin. He hopes to study timekeeping more in depth someday and will never be able to thank his father enough for introducing him to the industry. You can follow him on Instagram Read his articles here
