The official launch will be on the 5th of May, but we have been invited by mr Lehmann to have a sneak preview of the beta version website.

The website includes the whole range of products of Chopard, but the main focus remains watches and jewelery ofcourse. In the accessoiries section you’ll find all leather goods, ties, pens, glasses and parfums. The ladies section covers the Happy Diamonds, Happy Sports, Classic, Two o Ten and a number of jewelery collections. The Gents section covers the famous Mille Miglia, L.U.C and (new to me) Grand Prix de Monaco Historique series of watches.

The Chopard section covers what watch fans and Chopard die-hards want to see I think. A nice history overview of the brand, background information on Chopard’s watchmaking history and the innovative L.U.C movements. It also has all the details inside on the L.U.Ceum, Chopard’s own museum.

As a reader from this blog, you are invited to take a look at the beta website of Chopard. The login details are below:

http://beta.chopard.ch
username: addict
password: preview

The website is still in ‘test’-phase, so if you encounter any problems, it would be great if you could send your findings/issues to beta@chopard.com.

Tennis star Maria Sharapova just turned 21 years old on the 23rd of April. TAG Heuer organized a big birthday party for their ambassador of sports watches. The press release states that TAG Heuer was honored to do so. Yeah

I understand the whole ambassador concept, it seems to attract potential buyers. But why giving a birthday party AND brag about it in press releases? Anyway, it does produces some nice pictures

Well, so far I haven’t been the biggest poster on Fratello. Being busy with a lot of other stuff I found it hard to come up with a nice subject for a new post..

But now I found a interesting watch.. The Ingenieur Climate Action. Let’s start with a pic (posted on ThePurists):

Mm.. I actually kinda like the looks. It reminds me a bit of the white Millgauss-funk.

But something isn’t quite right here. Climate Action? Ok, a valid reason for a nice limited edition. With proceeds partially going to the Climate Action Fund, this is a really nice idea I guess. But it is somewhat weird when you’ve got a model in the same range in cooperation with Mercedes AMG in my opinion. Keep in mind AMG is famous for their nice roaring 5.5’s, 6.3’s, 7.3’s etc (that is considered a BIG engine over here, LOL)…

What are your thoughts? I think I could get over it.. the watch looks good .

Alon over at the Ace Jewelers Blog posts great pictorials on the Basel 2008 expo. Besides the brands he carries for his Ace shop, he also posts pictures of various other brands.

I liked the concept of the Hamilton Code Breaker for example (see picture below). And another cool watch he posted about is the Hamilton Electric with an automatic mechanical movement. Finally, the Elvis watch becomes ‘interesting’ again. I never dug the quartz version and the originals are way too expensive

Photo by Alon

Please visit the Ace Jewelers Blog to get a good idea about the Basel Expo and its novelties..

Update: Another excellent review of the Basel 2008 expo has been written by Jocke. Click here for his lengthy and colorful report.

As Evert wrote in the last blog, Rolex seems to be stealing the Basel show. According to TimeZone member Imrankhan, who visited the Basel 2008 show, the Rolex booth was flooded with impressive watches! He wrote an excellent report on Basel (including a lot of images) in the Basel Forum over at TimeZone.

Besides all the heavy weight of Rolex, also Omega had something to show. A nice looking white dial Speedmaster Professional wrist watch. Dedicated to the 1970 project called ‘ALASKA’. This project was initiated to develop an outer case for the Omega Speedmaster Professional to handle the extreme temperatures on the dark side of the Moon. A press release on this watch can be found here, posted by Jorge Merino.

Photo by Imrankhan @ TZ.

Another booth that seems to be impressive is the one of Patek Philippe. Probably the best brand out there, as you might know. I always favored the Patek Philippe World Time wrist watch in white gold. At Basel, the introduced the ref. 5131 model of this watch, featuring an enamel dial. It seems that enamel dials are ‘back in business’ again, as they were in the very early 1990s. Based on the copies of Chronos and Armband Uhren from that time.

And finally, Patek seems to care about people with decent wrists with this ref.5207. A 41mm wrist watch in platinum with a minute repeater, tourbillon and instant perpetual calendar with original windows, for which two patents are pending.

According to the press news by Jorge Merino on this wrist watch:

“The instant changing of all the date displays is a supplementary complication comprising 212 interacting components. This new exploit took more than five years to develop and is one of the brand’s most complicated wristwatches. Only a few will be produced each year.

Movement is the hand-wound Patek caliber RTO27PSQI, a minute repeater with tourbillon, COSC-certified as a chronometer and with the Geneva Seal mark. ”

Still curious what the last two days will bring us….

The 2008 Basel show is lovingly called “this time of year” around the Rolex boards. The rules of the game are that Rolex S.A. does it’s best to guard their news untill the start of the show, and the rest of the world seems to be hunting down every particle of information available. It starts in January with a wide variaty of wild rumours, and it always narrows down in March to some mixture of truth and nonsense. This years truths were a new and bigger Sea-Dweller and a red gold Daytona, secrets not really well kept. The nonsense turned out to be a Daytona with a date window and the rumours about anything on a rubber bracelet.

So, what does the horological land scape look like after Basel? For the broad trends in the whole industry I’m not informed well enough yet, but for the Rolex brand some initial conclusions can be drawn. The first and most significant one is that Rolex follows the big watch trend after all with a bonanza of 40 and 41 mm dress watches and a Sea-Dweller of 43 mm. An interpretation of this fact could be that their attempts to revive the 36 mm size for men were to no avail: the Turn-O-Graph, the new Datejusts and Day Dates just don’t work for todays men anymore in terms of sales. 40 mm is the new standard and even the stable and cautious design school of Rolex has to follow the market.

My second observation is that the design job of filling this bigger dials in some way seems to puzzle the Rolex company. A range of solutions has been chosen, from a wild carnival of colors for markers, hands and glass on last years Milgauss, to dials with more and more expressive writings and numerals even on this years new 36 mm watches. The new Day Dates got a more busy dial and the bigger Sea-Dweller Deep Sea gained an extra Power Ring under the glass and a lot more writing as well. Not to start again about last years new Yacht Master II that is filled with funny primary colors and complications. Somehow the designers seem to be afraid of simplicity or empty spaces. Although the new Day Date is a wonderfull new piece, in all the new dial layouts are far from perfect in my opinion.

Thirdly it is noticable that with the introduction of the DeepSea, Rolex continues their beautiful high end tool watch tradition. The fears of every model being turned into a polished dress watch did not become reality after all. But as pointed out in the text of their own press kitt: The deep seas are part of peoples dreams. And the depth rating of 3900 meters it will also stay there and will not come to life: there is not much use even for divers to have a watch with this qualities. Does that make this a silly invention? Bottom line: Yes. Does that make it a silly watch? No, not at all. The DeepSea is an impressive piece of innovation and an absolutely gorgeous tool watch I’d love to own. It is Non Plus Ultra, nothing superior seems to exist. That is what we all want and why we spend ridiculous amounts on luxury watches, right? On the other hand, in moving in this direction Rolex accepts that their wrist watches have nothing extra to add to modern day life anymore. Back in the ’50’s they did add usefull functionalities to watches when they invented Submariners for real divers and GMT Masters for real pilots. Without going into any suggestions for other concepts, this does feel like a missed opportunity to me.

In all the noise of the new innovations one should not forget to mention the gradual and flawless update of the Submariner. It moved in the same direction as the lovely new GMT II: maxi case, maxi hands and a new bezel. Although the color of blue of this first white gold model has been a turn off for many and the watch has been renamed The Smurf already, color is a matter of taste and the new Sub is a thing of beauty in the best Rolex tradition.

So, where does this leave the Rolex line up right now? With the new Day Dates and Datejusts Rolex covers the dress and jewelry watches segment just perfectly, both for women as well as for men again, there is space for innovations that go extreme and beyond with the DeepSea, and the main lines of Submariner and GMT II had their subtle but very strong updates. It is a job well done and worthy of the companies legendary name. Actually… I’m looking forward to Basel 2009 rumours already. - Evert ‘08

Credits for the picture go Elmar @ Oysterinfo.de