Women’s Watch Wednesday – Hands-On with the Audemars Piguet Millenary Frosted Gold Opal Dial
The Audemars Piguet Millenary Frosted Gold Opal Dial is my horological fantasy come true. Appealing on an aesthetic and technical level, the Millenary Frosted Gold Opal Dial wears its beating heart on its sleeve and plays with volume, texture, and light in a contemporary key. Feminine yet assertive, this Millenary model flies in the face of traditional women’s watches. As François-Henri Bennahmias, CEO of Audemars Piguet likes to say: “women’s watches shouldn’t be limited to shrinking, pinking and adding a few diamonds.” And, as you will see, there is absolutely nothing shrinky, pinky or diamondy about the Millenary Frosted Gold.
One of the strongest, all-round collections of SIHH was, without a doubt, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris. Coming off a strong 2017 lineup, JLC hit all the right notes with their brand new Polaris collection. While this five-strong family of watches is clearly influenced by the Polaris of yore (for more on that, check out Andy’s look at the origins of the model), this is more interpretation than pure homage. Sure, there’s the Polaris Memovox, which is the closest the collection gets to a one-for-one reissue, but there are also relatively simple automatic and date models (the date is my pick of the litter, FWIW). The Polaris DNA is strong in these models, thanks to the dial, as well as the dual crown layout, but it also works wonderfully in the more complex Chronograph and Chronograph WT options. All told, the 2018 Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris family is considered and commercial in equal measure, and already looks set to be one of the year’s highlights.
First shown at Baselworld 2017, the stunner that is the Breguet Reine de Naples 8918 in rose gold is my pick of Breguet’s women’s offerings (in Australia) at the moment. Breguet is all proportion, horological order and watchmaking museum elegance. But sprinkle that heritage with 1.46 carats worth of white diamonds and the ghosts of French royalty, and you are contemplating a pretty heady proposition. Let’s start with the diamonds before working back over the centuries to Parisian courtiers, and really, it’s hard not to. They include a pear-shaped diamond at 6pm (approx. 0.09ct); a briolette-cut diamond on the off-set crown situated at 4pm (approx. 0.26ct); the rose gold folding clasp that is set with 26 brilliant-cut diamonds (approx. 0.12ct); and the bezel and dial flange is encircled with 117 brilliant-cut diamonds (approx. 0.99ct). It might all be too blinding a vista to take in if the case was in white gold with a pale dial (and this model is one of 11 variants); but here, the dial makes calming use of champagne Tahitian natural mother-of-pearl with some white tones of the same material. Depending on the light, the dial’s main hue ranges from hazelnut or light chocolate brown to taupe, with…