Monsieur De Chanel
This effort has been considered and designed from the ground up, developing a case, dial and movement from scratch over a period of five years. The development of a movement is no easy feat, requiring hundreds, if not thousands of hours to complete, working along side experts with multiple decades of experience.
The aptly titled Calibre 1 features a ‘jumping hour’ display with retrograde minutes hand and is comprised of 170 individual components. Put simply, the hour marker at the bottom of the display is on a circular disc, which once an hour will instantaneously advance to the following hour. Retrograde minutes refers to a display which, in this case, is spread over 240 degrees horizontally.
The single hand will advance from 0 minutes, on the left hand side, all the way over to 60 minutes, on the right, and will snap back to 0 during the time the hour indicator takes to advance. This process then repeats.
designed from scratch, is skeletonized; making for a dramatic mechanical view when looking through the open case back. A lot of fashion brands enter this market with off-the-shelf movements provided by wholesale movement manufacturers, seen by many as the lazy route.
It’s somewhat refreshing to see the seriousness with which Chanel approaches watchmaking and we are quite sure that this piece will be received with the respect it deserves. The Chanel Monsieur will be released in a limited edition of 300 individually numbered movements, of which 150 will be in Beige gold while the remaining 150 will be produced in white gold. The Monsieur encapsulates a kind of masculine elegance, blending the machine like technical aspects of the watch with beautiful Chanel design.
Written by Lee Joseph, MR H editor.