BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Laurent Ferrier, known for making extremely subtle watches with beautiful movements with some racing heritage in the mix as well. This isn’t one of the models to feature racing-inspired colours or designs, although you could say that because the dial is green, it links to British Racing Green used on old race cars. I don’t think that would be correct in this case, although the marketing team may update their press brief after reading this, who knows.
What we do know is that Laurent Ferrier has put in a lot of work to make this green-dial version of the Classic Origin watch look as good as the other models in the range do. The dial features a green colour which starts out being relatively light around the centre and fading to a dark green colour around the edge. The principle is the same as the fumé dials from H.Moser & Cie, but here the dial is textured in a way, and the graduation is overall less dramatic than on the Moser. The polished Assegai-shape hands stand out, as do the long markers. Meanwhile, a crosshair printed on the dial makes reading a little more simplistic at a glance.
The 40mm x 10.7mm rounded case is made of grade 5 titanium that’s been worked to a smooth polish, a sizeable feat considering the hardness of the metal and the difficulty surrounding polishing in general. The long and yet narrow lugs flow gracefully into the case while the ball-shaped crown stands out as a signature of the brand.
Around the back and exposed for the world to see is the calibre LF 116.01. It’s a hand-wound affair as we can expect from a classical dress watch such as this. It features quite a bit of dark tinting on the blasted matte surface, but some mirror polishing around the bevels makes this movement even more of a stand-out to view. The movement has a Breguet overcoil on the hairspring for better stability and accuracy. The overcoil means that the Classic Origin Green can be more accurate and still have a lower beat rate of 3Hz. It also has a power reserve of 80 hours.
There’s a sense of ultra-refined quality that can only be had from a watch at this level. The Classic Origin Green by Laurent Ferrier comes on a brown Timberland leather strap with a pin buckle, is limited to just 30 examples and has a price of CHF28,500.
