a toast to two decades

To toast two decades of its Ocean Collection, Harry Winston has developed a new complicated timepiece. The Ocean Biretrograde Perpetual Calendar Automatic was unveiled at Baselworld — Switzerland’s largest watch fair —  in March and is now the watch and jewellery maker’s fourth bi-retrograde perpetual calendar.

Harry Winston’s first bi-retrograde perpetual calendar was launched in 1989 as a world first and was created by famed watchmakers Jean-Marc Wiederrecht and Roger Dubuis (who later founded his own watch company). It would be 18 years before Harry Winston would create its second bi-retrograde perpetual calendar in 2007, followed by a third in 2010, which was introduced in the Premier Collection. The latest update contains a mechanism that has been completely redesigned by the Swatch Group.

Like its predecessors, the new Biretrograde Perpetual Calendar’s complication serves its wearer by taking into account the number of days in the month and the cycle of leap years. The perpetual calendar, which does not have to be manually corrected every 5 years to adjust to the varying days of the month and leap years, must be specifically designed around the display. The leap-year indication is encircled by the month indicator at 12 o’clock. Topping off that complication are two more: the moonphase, tracking the moon in the sky according to time, and the bi-retrograde hands that read the day of the week and the numerical date. The retrograde hands automatically jump back once their cycle of the week and month are complete.

The update to those functions lie in the design. The 2010 version’s bi-retrograde functions for the day of the week and the date were encased in two semicircles, with retrograde months at 10 o’clock and retrograde dates at 7 o’clock — as opposed to a retrograde day of the week lining the left-hand side of the case and the retrograde date on the right-hand side with the month indicated at 12 o’clock. The case is sportier in appearance in the 2018 version but has a decidedly dressier and more ornate dial decoration. In 2010, the dial featured a sleek Côtes de Genève decorative finish, while the new dial features a more complex Clou de Paris guilloche motif at the heart of the timepiece. The new Biretrograde Perpetual Calendar is slightly larger at 42 mm as opposed to 41 mm, and it features 72 hours of power reserve instead of 45 hours.

Available in 18-karat rose gold or white gold with a brown or blue leather alligator strap, the new Biretrograde Perpetual Calendar Automatic will also be available in white gold on a black alligator strap with baguette-cut diamonds limited to 20 pieces.