Vacheron Constantin Just Released A New, Delightfully-Excessive Overseas
Before his ill-fated attempt to summit Mount Everest in 1924, a reporter asked British explorer George Mallory why he wanted to climb the mountain in the first place. He famously replied, “Because it’s there.” Such, one has to imagine, is the thinking at Vacheron Constantin, the 270-year-old Swiss luxury watch brand and the world’s oldest continuously operating watchmaker. Vacheron Constantin has a vested interest in reminding the world that no one does it better when it comes to haute horlogerie, and what better way to drive home that point than by doing things simply to prove that they can? The latest evidence of this is the Overseas Grand Complication Openface, a titanium sports watch equipped with a minute repeater, a perpetual calendar, and a tourbillon.
The Overseas collection traces its lineage back to the recently reintroduced 222. Originally launched in celebration of the brand’s 222nd anniversary in 1977, the 222 was Vacheron Constantin’s entry into the new category of modern luxury sports watches, including the IWC Ingenieur, Chopard St. Moritz, and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. The Overseas collection as we know it today came along in 1996 and from then until relatively recently has remained true to its sporty-luxurious origins, with a small selection of complications like GMTs and chronographs, and a few dressier options in pink gold. With the advent of the Overseas Grand Complication Openface, however, the Overseas is breaking new ground.
“With the boundaries between watchmaking genres becoming increasingly blurred today, the world of horological complications is no longer confined to fragile, museum-quality timepieces – far from it. This is exactly what Vacheron Constantin is doing with the Overseas collection,” explains Christian Selmoni, Director of Style and Patrimony at Vacheron Constantin. “Conceived as a watch with a spirit of exploration adapted to the adventures of everyday life, with useful complications such as a chronograph or dual time-zone display, the Overseas also knows how to go beyond those boundaries.”
The Overseas collection has recently grown to include tourbillon and ultra-thin skeletonized perpetual calendars, but even so, the Overseas Grand Complication Openface takes things to a whole other level of complexity. As every watch nerd knows, the minute-repeater—a timepiece that can chime the time on a set of tiny steel gongs—is among the most difficult watches to make. The tourbillon, a tiny gyroscope that is believed to improve accuracy by compensating for the effects of gravity, is a close second. Then, of course, there’s the perpetual calendar, which is designed to display the date accurately for centuries. Doing any one of these things is an impressive feat, but doing all three of them in a movement that’s just 33.9 mm in diameter and 7.9 mm thick is really something. Oh, and the case is rated water-resistant to 30 metres as well, just in case you want to take it for a dip in the infinity pool.
Things didn’t turn out too well for George Mallory, who never returned from his final attempt at summiting Everest, but Vacheron Constantin continues summiting the world’s highest horological peaks simply because they’re there. For anyone who loves beautiful, unapologetically excessive watches, that’s great news.
Discover the Overseas Grand Complication Openface online.
