Page 64 - Trends

SHOPTALK

ANTHEM TO LOVE

or Valentine’s Day, Blancpain once again proclaims its love for women
Fby introducing a passionate timepiece especially dedicated to them.
The backdrop for the dial of this new watch, designed to mark the day
of love and romance, is a mother-of-pearl sky sprinkled with 19 diamonds
and four rubies, all brilliant-cut and secured using the “star setting” technique.
This type of gemsetting involves using a metal base in order to drive the
stone into the dial.
For the very first time in the Blancpain collections, the exquisite sapphire
moon phase has been placed at a sloping angle at 6 o’clock. It is adorned with a
slender border and the opening features a softly rounded shape. This moon, with its
unmistakably feminine face, is an amusing nod to history, since the artificial mole of
“beauty spot”, known as a mouche for its similarity to a fly appearing at the corner of
its smiling mouth, was regarded in 18th century France as symbolizing a playfully teasing
attitude. Mouches were used by ladies of the Court as a message to their suitors that differed
according to where these coquettish signs were placed.
The moon phase is a horological complication that had almost vanished from the scene until Blancpain
reintroduced it in the early 1980s. Since then, it has become a signature of the Manufacture.

PANERAI: A CLASS APART

trong, simple and iconic: for many years, the Luminor Logo has been one of the
Sbestsellers of the Panerai collections, thanks to its powerful, distinctive identity, both
in the Luminor Base Logo version and in the one with the small-seconds counter at 9
o’clock, the Luminor Marina Logo. A sports watch with a striking, minimalist design, this
model’s only decorative element is the OP logo on the dial; all of the other details are
purely functional, faithful to the history of Panerai.
With the introduction of the new P.6000 calibre, hand-wound with a power
reserve of three days, this collection is now renewed and enhanced by six
watches: three new Luminor Base Logo 3 Days and three Luminor Marina Logo 3
Days, all with the polished steel case, which is 44mm in diameter.
The dials of the new models have the classic Panerai design, extremely readable
both in daylight and in the dark, and available in white or black, with the OP logo at 6
o’clock in blue or white.
Consisting of the interlinked letters O and P with two arrows pointing up and down,
this logo refers to OfficinePanerai’s two historic vocations. In the early years of the 20th
century, the Panerai workshops in Florence began creating optical and other precision
instruments for the Royal Italian Navy, not only for underwater operations but also for
searching the sky.
The combination of sea and sky is part of the history of the brand, a fact that is
marked by the name Radiomir, that of the first military diver’s watch ever made, created
by Panerai for the Navy in 1936, which has gradually evolved over the years into the
contemporary Luminor.

64 TRENDS | February 2018