Watch Complications
Calendar Watches
More complicated than just displaying the date, a calendar watch usually displays the date, the day of the week and the month. Compared to a perpetual calendar, it won’t display the leap year and will require some adjustments. The most complicated type of calendar watches are the Annual Calendar ones, that will take into account the months with 30 or 31 days. The only adjustment required is at the end of February. Another calendar watch is the Quantième Complet or Full Calendar, which requires adjustments for all months with less than 31 days.
Grande Complication
A Grande Complication is a watch that features several of the most complicated functions: Tourbillon, Minute Repeater, Grande Sonnerie, Perpetual Calendar or Split Second Chronograph are reunited in a single timepiece. Only few manufactures are skilled enough to create such technical timepieces. This very rare type of watches represents the quintessence of the Haute Horlogerie and the ‘Grail’ of every watch aficionados.
Dress Watches
The usual consensus, when asking several people, will lead you to any simple, discreet and elegant watch that would fit a suit-and-tie dress code. First of all, it has to be simple and classical. A dress watch has to be discreet and elegant – meaning a rather small and conservative timepiece. It also has to be thin enough to fit under your cuffs. In order to keep elegance and discretion, the diameter of the watch has to be reasonable and usually under 40mm. Last specification: a precious material, such as gold or platinum, is usually preferred.
Other Display
In this category, you will find the watches that displays time with alternatively. If ‘Indie Rock’ is the rebel side of Rock & Roll, watches here have this same independent, innovative and uncompromising spirit. Some of the timepieces of this category are displaying time wit fluidic tubes, rotating discs, satellite complications, retrograde hands or digital functions. And the watchmakers are so innovative that we haven’t seen anything yet.
Perpetual Calendar
A perpetual calendar is one of the most difficult complication to create for a watchmaker, as it will take into account the months with 30 or 31 days, but also the specific month of February with its 28 days and even the leap years. Meaning that every 4 years, it knows that February has 29 days. The only adjustment will occur every 100 years, when there is no leap year. The perfect type of watch to keep your mind free.
Ultra Thin
An ultra-thin watch will usually have an overall thickness of 7 or 8mm or even less. To achieve such dimensions, a movement with a height of just 2 – 3 mm is required. Imagine how thin that actually is, compared to your average watch strap! These ultra-thin movements are a complication on itself, and only va few watch companies can create and manufacture such movements. Such watches are commonly linked to dress watches, due to the elegance an ultra-thin watch naturally has.
Moon phase
The phase of the moon has always been a poetic complication. It indicates the position of the moon as can be observed from the earth. The moon reflects light from the sun, and while rotating around the Earth is changing continuously, going from new moon, to waxing moon, to full moon, to waning moon and back to new moon again. The moon rotates around the earth every 29,530588853 days, although most moon phase indications are adjusted to 29.5 days.
Tourbillon
Invented by the genius and famous Abraham Louis Breguet, the tourbillon is a specific escapement mechanism that aims to counter the effects of gravity by mounting the escapement and balance wheel in a rotating cage, to negate the effect of gravity when the timepiece (thus the escapement) is stuck in a certain position. Such features are highly difficult to balance and set and thus, reserved to high-end timepieces.
