Two pure round dress watches, and a shared secret: the independent was made by a man who spent thirty-seven years inside one of the great Geneva houses before leaving to sign his own name. The house, or the hand that used to work there?
Matched on
The pure round dress watch, time and small seconds, nothing to hide behind. A century-old benchmark against the man who spent his career building for it, then left.
Patek Philippe, Geneva
About USD 37,500, in gold
The reference round dress watch, descended from the 1932 Calatrava that defined the form. A clean case, a hobnail bezel, an in-house hand-wound movement under the Patek Seal. You are buying the deepest name in watchmaking and the liquidity that comes with it, the safe and serious blue-chip choice.
Laurent Ferrier, Geneva
From about CHF 34,000, in titanium
Laurent Ferrier spent thirty-seven years inside one of Geneva's great houses, rising to lead its creation department, then left to make the pure watch under his own name. The teardrop lugs, the drop-shaped hands, the hand-finishing: his, not a committee's. In titanium it lands near the Calatrava; in gold it runs well past it. You are buying the insider's alternative to the house he came from.
The verdict
This is the maison against the man who built for it. The Calatrava is the benchmark every round dress watch is measured against, with the resale to match. The Laurent Ferrier is the same pure idea in the hands of someone who spent a career at exactly that bench and then signed his own name to it. Matched in gold, the independent costs half again to twice the Patek. One buys you the house. The other buys you the hand that used to work there. Both are right; only one is a secret.
The TGC view
The most interesting independents are often the people who trained inside the famous houses and left. Laurent Ferrier is the clearest case. We handle the introduction, the allocation and the visit, and the quiet pleasure of a watch almost no one at the table will place.
An IWC pilot's watch against a Bavarian house that makes its own steel and its own movements. The usual story is that the independent charges a premium. Here it does not, and the establishment name is the one trading under list.
Read the review →Breguet patented the tourbillon in 1801 and puts the patent date on the dial. A twenty-something Frenchman on the shore of Lake Annecy makes twelve tourbillons a year by hand, and charges less. For once the independent is not the expensive one.
Read the review →Two watches judged on the same virtue, finishing, at twenty times the price. One is a Japanese manufacture selling a mirror-polished case for the price of a holiday. The other is a Finnish master hand-making fifty a year. How far up the curve does your eye want to go?
Read the review →