Giving the classic a new spirit and desirability
One of the market's most overlooked watch companies is Frederique Constant. A watch company that is also a manufacture in its own right and has produced some of the most practical watches and grand complications timepieces there are on the market at a fraction of the price of the more established Maison, from the superb automatic three hands to World Timer, from Perpetual Calendar to tourbillon. All are beautifully designed and packaged in clean and modern classics. Their watches are just as reliable as the big boys too.
In 2022 Frederique Constant surprised the world as they unveiled a brand-new version of their very well-received Slimline Perpetual Calendar, which was first launched in 2016, and the new iteration was a collaboration with The Naked Watchmaker. The couple behind the moniker is none other than the British watchmaker Peter Speake and his wife Daniela Marin, previously of the Speake-Marin brand. The collaboration between the two has resulted in a skeletonised dial version. The watch not only surprised the world of horology but also wowed them, with its handsome design and a modern classic interpretation.
If you have been following Peter Speake-Marin's work, you would notice a nuance of familiarity surrounding the aesthetics of the design of the Peter Speak touches here and there, yet different, as we can see in the colour used, as in the brown of the skeleton dial in 2016 edition, and perhaps the fonts and skeleton hands, though not presence in the Speake-Marin watches of the past, or the treatment given to the finishing of the components.
The current edition is exactly the same as the 2016 edition, except for the colour detailing. The watch as a whole, I have mentioned before, is different from what he had done at Speake-Marin back then but yet so familiar. The skeleton dial is in matte anthracite grey with transferred luminescent indexes, four dial-rings arranged around the face of the watch, 12 o’clock for the months in a combination of alphabets, dot and roman numerals and leap year counter with the brand name on the other right, 3 o’clock for the date in Arabic numerals and indices, 6 o’clock for the luminous treated moonphase on a circular polished plated disc, and 9 o’clock is for the day indicator. The skeleton hours and minutes hands sit above them centrally.
Below the grey skeleton dial reveals the anthracite grey bridges, which were blue in the 2016 edition. The polished components, the blue steel rivets and the golden wheels made up the complete in-house automatic Calibre FC-775 with a blue rotor and harness 38 hours of power reserve. They are all skilfully executed. If one is bold enough to say that it rivals the big boys with big-bucks price tags. How do they do it? Is only one’s guess. The marvels are housed in a 42mm stainless steel case with a fluted crown.
If you are one of those who has been eyeing at perpetual calendar watches but are put off by the price they usually come with, then I would strongly advise you to take this Slimline Perpetual Calendar Manufacture by Peter Speake into serious consideration, as it has everything you want in a perpetual calendar except the price, it may not be cheap, but it is the most reasonable of them all.
