The Best of Basel 2015

Patek Philippe Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Ref. 5524

Taking design cues from two vintage aviator watches from the Patek Philippe Museum, revered fine watchmaking brand Patek Philippe has released the Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Ref. 5524, a never-before-seen model in a 42mm white gold case which features a patented, second time zone system that is especially useful for air travel. Powered by the automatic calibre 324 S C FUS, which has a central rotor in 21K gold, the timepiece has a dark navy blue dial the same shade as the body paint of 1930s American fighter planes. Big, applied Arabic numerals in white gold and Super Lumina baton hands for local hours and minutes make the watch easy to read. A skeletonised GMT hand for the second time zone hides behind the main hour hand when not in use, i.e. the local and home times are identical. There are day/night indicators for each time zone, local at 9 o’clock and home at 3 o’clock, and a sub-dial at 6 o’clock displays the date in three-day increments. The strap is made of vintage brown calfskin leather with contrast topstitching, reminiscent of the leather belts worn by pilots from the same era, and the first time Patek Philippe uses such a material.

Breguet Tradition Chronographe Indépendant 7077

With a timekeeper and a chronograph powered by two entirely independent systems, Breguet’s Tradition Chronographe Indépendant 7077 is like looking at two watches at once. Within the 44mm white or rose gold case, the manual winding calibre 580DR has no interaction between the hours and minutes function and the chronograph function, which allows for both functions to perform more accurately. The running time can be read from the offset guilloché dial at the top of the watch. Overlapping this display are retrograde indicators for the 50-hour power reserve, at 2 o’clock, and for the chronograph minutes, at 10 o’clock. An unnumbered track that runs around the flange tells the chronograph seconds, and a chronograph hand is mounted at the centre of the dial. The chronograph is controlled by two screwed-in pushers on the case middle, on either side of the lower lugs. These pushers, too, are unconventional: one of the buttons starts the chronograph, while the other stops and resets it.