Luxury trunk maker and luggage juggernaut, Louis Vuitton has been making fine luggage and suitcases since 1854. Because of the company’s long and proud history, tradition is a valuable word in the house of LV, but that has not stopped them from becoming extremely innovative, modern and creative.Always the trendsetter, Louis Vuitton has been careful to progressively expand with a range of luxury products that are consistent with the brand’s core values. In 1892, for example, the company needed to grow and expanded into the much faster paced handbag market. In 1997, the enigmatic designer Marc Jacobs joined the firm as Artistic Director and with that “acquisition” the company, already steeped in heritage and tradition, opened its doors and began offering a line of leather goods, ties, ready-to-wear lines for men and women, pens, men’s and women’s shoes, jewelry; and in 2002 made the move to haute horlogerie and began offering precious watches.

The new face of luxury timekeeping. Do take the time to stop and stare. The name and the brand Hermès has always been synonymous to luxury and quality craftsmanship. First established by Thierry Hermès in 1837 as a harness workshop, the product lines of the company soon grew to include clothing, leather goods, handbags, perfume, tableware and jewelry. Today, Hermes is a multi-million dollar firm with hundreds of boutiques and franchises across the globe, and continues to provide nothing but the highest-quality goods for its clientele. In the year 2000, La Montre Hermès approached Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier with the intent of developing its own watch line. The company chose its partner well, as Vaucher Manufacture had a long and distinguished tradition of creating superb-quality mechanical watches. The collaboration resulted in the Dressage wristwatch, featuring the highprecision H 1928 calibre, which debuted in 2003.

The Breguet Type XX isn’t what most budding enthusiasts would consider typical of the storied name’s offerings. It doesn’t have many of the popular innovations and details of worksmanship you come to expect from the watchmaking company.The casework is simple, though it does carry the fluting on the side. The dial shows none of the legendary detailwork expertise for which Breguet has become known and popular, especially if you choose the unique carbon fiber dial that comes with the titanium case. You have no guillochage, no “secret number,” no signature. Even the byword “Breguet hands” only make an appearance on the Chronograph’s seconds hand.A Type XX from 1954 with flyback and straight line lever escapement. Note the similarity in details with the modern XX, including the shape of the subdial hand at 3 o’clock. Note the differences also, the central seconds hand uses a diamond shape rather than the recognized Breguet circle.

Officine Panerai watches are normally a sight to behold, but their recent partnership with Ferrari makes them even more of a collector’s item. Billed as Ferrari Engineered by Officine Panerai, the watch collection displays the engineering, technology, design, style, tradition, sportiness and passion synonymous with the two brands. The two collections--Scuderia and Granturismo--are designed for those who have a fondness for “Made In Italy” exclusive creations that can also boast of outstanding functions. And for those that still want more from the Panerai-Ferrari partnership, five new iterations stand out. The first is the Ferrari Chronograph Red Dial 45 mm, featuring a polished steel case with brushed steel edges, two screw down chronograph push pieces and a crown with rims worked in a square grid pattern.

On the move again. Deeper. TAG Heuer has put something new forward for those with the need for depth and the love of the visually mechanical.Many collectors are enamored by the timepieces of the deep, those that are not just dive watches but deep, deep dive watches. Watches that will keep on going long after your own mortal body will have been crushed if you happened to actually test the thing in the water. These watches are big, bulky and heavy in order to withstand the pressures you will see as you start reaching past where the light can go. Because of this need for strength and impregnability, they also almost always have metal backs. Usually engraved with the depth rating, or an image of an old metal diving helmet or such, they were a necessary tool for those that worked the deep. For the enthusiast though, it meant that you couldn’t see your movement.

HURRICANE COBBER The Merlin II sputtered into life, and only then my two wingmen started their Hurricane Is. After the usual checks, I waved the wheel chocks away and taxied off. The takeoff was uneventful, and we grouped in standard V formation and climbed towards the skies above Saarbrücken, soon leveling off at our patrol height. I knew exactly where the German border was. It was against orders to cross this border, but I wanted some action, and frequently crossed it, disregarding orders anyway. We just crossed the border into Germany when I spotted some Messerschmitt Bf 109Es above us; nine of them. “Here’s the action!” I said to myself. I closed the gap in an favorable position and opened fire on the leader. Two “Emils” broke formation to attack us. The Hurricane trembled as all the eight .303 calibre Brownings fired a deadly hail of bullets, tracers showing hits on the leading Me 109. It caught fire and fell in a plume of smoke.

References to the super Irish rock band aside, the first thing you notice about your average U-Boat watch is its diminutive size…all 50mm of it on the average model! Yes, your typical U-Boat timepiece is not for the weak of disposition: conservative types need not apply. Indeed, the alpha male types of Hollywood royalty grace several pages of the manufactures’ equally oversized brochures and press kits. In case you haven’t figured it out, U-Boat watches, just like their original submarine namesake, are bold, aggressive and oversized. One model, the FLIGHTDECK ECLIPSE, is so masculine, it actually resembles a vintage German WWII hand grenade; definitely not for the faint hearted or, for that matter, the limp wristed (no pun intended).

Looking backwards sometimes is looking forwards. Girard-Perregaux has been making watches for a long time. And they haven’t forgotten how it all started, either. GP a company with a history, and this year, they are renovating the repository of that history, their museum. The Villa Marguerite holds tokens of the G-P company heritage, which stretches as far back as 1854, when, as they say, the first Girard married the first Perregaux. That was the birth of the brand name that is so familiar to horology fans, although it is interesting to note that the company can trace its roots even farther back, to 1791. La Chaux-de-Fonds is the traditional home of Girard-Perregaux, and in their time there they’ve come up with some memorable watches. And not all wristwatches, either; some say G-P can take credit for inventing the wristwatch, but their creations date back before that, to the pocket watches which were their awardwinning devices.

DELIGHTFUL DERIVATIVE The revolutionary Panerai P.2005 watch movement set a standard for diving watches, thanks to world-reknowned accuracy, a GMT function, manual winding and three spring barrels that accumulates enough energy to operate the watch for at least six days. One delightful derivative of this calibre (the movement of the watch) is the Luminor 1950 Tourbillon GMT 47 MM Titanium. This watch combines tradition, sports qualities and exclusivity, along with durability characterized by a strong yet light case created in Grade Two titanium. The new Luminor is distinguished in particular by the tourbillon, a device invented by horologist Abraham-Louis Breguet at the end of the 18th century in order to eliminate errors of rate (faster or slower variations in time indication) caused by changes in the center of gravity, inaccurate workmanship, the thickening of the lubricating oil and the consequent varying friction in the different positions assumed by the watch.

The Seiko Watch Corporation has always been at the forefront of watch-making technology. With its latest release of the Spring Drive, the company looks poised to spark yet another major change in the industry.Driven to Lead Seiko has always taken great pride in being an innovator. From its humble beginnings as a clock supply factory and clockmaker established toward the end of the 19th century in the Ginza district of Tokyo, it ventured into watch-making, eventually releasing its first wristwatch model in 1924. But it was in 1969 that Seiko attained global fame by becoming the first watch company to successfully develop and market quartz watch technology. The world’s very first quartz watch, the Astron, was launched on December 25, 1969, months ahead of its Swiss competitors. This was quite a remarkable feat at the time, since Swiss manufacturers had long been recognized as the leaders in creating high-end, quality timepieces.

In 1953, Rolex successfully tested a prototype watch called the Deep Sea Special strapped outside the bathyscape FNRS-2 to a depth of 3,150m or 10,336ft. Rolex proved its design mantra with an ultra-rigid Oyster case. By Basel 1954, they had raised the depth rating on all Submariners to 180m or 600ft, in conjunction with the release of the Submariner model 6204. On January 23, 1960, Rolex pushed the envelope further with the Rolex Piccard (model 7205) attached to the bathyscape Trieste that successfully dived to a depth of 10,916m or 35,800ft. The submariner made a great reputation in professional diving circles that in 1967; Rolex released its first Sea Dweller (model 1665) with the collaboration of COMEX (a French professional deep sea diving company). Fast-forward forty years to Basel in 2008; Rolex has once again forged a technological breakthrough in the mould of their latest divers watch the Sea-Dweller DEEPSEA (SDDS).

In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth… And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day. The founding magicians at Greubel Forsey have been creating horological wonders since the company’s humble beginnings in 1999, but it was at the unveiling of their signature piece in Baselworld 2004 where true magic was beheld. Despite coming from different backgrounds and nationalities, Englishman Stephen Forsey and Frenchman Robert Greubel shared one common passion: the tireless pursuit of peerless quality. As watchmakers they also shared another obsession, the Tourbillon; they both expressed the need to elevate the escapement to the Horological peaks they felt it should occupy.