There are complicated watches, and then there are complicated watches that somehow manage not to look like complicated watches.
Vacheron Constantin’s latest Overseas belongs firmly in the second bucket. Created to mark the collection’s 30th anniversary, the new Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin combines a white-gold case with a new, lighter azure-blue dial. Just 200 will be made.
And there is an awful lot going on beneath that rather handsome blue face. Its self-winding calibre 1120 QP/1 measures just 4.05mm thick, yet manages to keep track of the date, day, month, leap years and phases of the moon. Assuming you’re still around to worry about it, the calendar won’t require correcting until 2100. Even more impressively, the entire watch is only 8.1mm thick.
The case measures 41.5mm across and the movement, comprising 276 components, can be admired through the sapphire caseback, complete with a 22k-gold rotor decorated with the Overseas’ compass-rose motif.
And then there’s that dial. Vacheron describes the new azure as lighter and less saturated than the blue associated with the Overseas since 2016. Paired with white gold, it gives an extremely serious piece of haute horlogerie a surprisingly relaxed appearance.
It comes on the excellent integrated white-gold bracelet pictured here, plus white and denim-blue rubber straps, all interchangeable without tools.
Thirty years into the Overseas story, Vacheron has found a pretty sweet way to celebrate.