Lange & Söhne 2014 Novelties

Watches and wonders have kick started in HK and fb mates of mine that are there are posting up pics of the events. though more important things are happening in the streets of HK with the Occupy Central protest but I am sure it's not affecting the watch afficionados from having a great time. alas i'm in Singapore working my buns off... 

anyhoot, Lange had their pieces in Singapore before they headed out to HK and this was from my visit down mid-Sep to their Ion boutique to check them out. now i do really like some Lange & Söhne timepieces alot. i have often looked at the original(and to me better) Datograph LINK and considered it... before buying something else. it was not only that, at that point in time, i had my eye on another piece but also that i am not much of a dress up guy(or dress watch guy) and have an overall preference for more unique and/or sporty watches which are versatile. of late, with the ever increasing watch prices, it just keeps on getting further out of reach for folks without loadsamoney. iPhone shots follow as that was what i had with me then but i did choose the best amongst them to share my thoughts on the pieces below.

from left to right then: (1) zeitwerk striking time in pink gold which chimes at the quarters and the hour
(44.2mm * 13.1mm) - my thoughts on this piece? it is pretty darn big and it chimed a a little softly

(2) and (3) Grand Lange 1 Moonphase Pink Gold and Platinum(41mm * 9.5mm) - lovely pieces impo
and i found it hard to take the plat off my wrist.. till i heard the list price was S$82,600! 

(4)  Richard Lange Perpetual Calendar Terraluna(45.5mm * 16.5mm) - i am not a fan of 'complicated
dress watches that are super huge'. 41, maybe even 42, max perhaps but 45.5... that's panerai territory

First we start with the heavy hitter... Richard Lange Perpetual Calendar Terraluna

there's a ton of marketing stuff about this watch see HERE but all i could think of is it's HUGE!
the dial is also a bit of a miss for me personally as it seems a little busy visually 

from Lange's site on the moon phase: "In slightly more than 29.5 days, the moon orbits the earth once – in an anti-clockwise direction. A planetary wheel train assures that the moon phase is always correctly displayed. The mechanism is engineered to such a high degree of accuracy that it takes 1058 years before a correction by one day is required. In the middle of the celestial disc, the earth disc rotates through 360 degrees once a day. It is daytime on the half that faces the sun (the balance) and night-time on the other. The peripheral 24-hour scale provides a rough time-of-day reference for regions in the northern hemisphere."

wristshot and if i had noted it right, list for this is S$301,100

the moonphase on this is really a joy to behold and is a thing of beauty. simply wonderfully done

from Lange's site: A patented coating process is responsible for the rich colour saturation and crisp details of the disc. 
It eliminates all non-blue colour spectra in the incident light. The result is an intensely blue colour surface on which
 the 382 sharply contoured stars stand out in vibrant contrast. The diameter of the smallest stars is a scant
 0.07 millimetres – less than that of a human hair.

the back is the covered up 3/4 plate movement which means there's not much to look at. i find the balance wheels 

a bit tiny for the watches but there's probably some reason they are the size they are. 

on the wrist... love it. now take a gander at the price tag and then have a look at your bank account... DAMN!
list price is S$82,600 for plat. Pink Gold is S$63k [note: 3rd gen regular 1815s at 38.5mm are 
S$32,400k for the golds and S$34,200 for the palladium. 2nd gen 40mm 1815s are S$32,600]

1815 tourby in pink gold list price is S$214,900. the LE plat one is S$263,600

some nice see through action going on there

and that's all there is. a nice visit down to Lange and thanks to my hosts there. to the question then, which dress watch for you? Patek 5070 vs the Lange Datograph Plat. probably the original Dato at a more reasonable 50-55k vs the 80s of the 5070... probably... 

signing off for now. cheers, raph

Watch Exhibition Live Pics: Jewellery Time 2014 By Cortina Watch 26 Sep to 5 Oct At Paragon

check out this short video for the 12 participating brands... in total they are exhibiting an eye watering $30million worth of bejewelled timepieces

Where: Paragon Main Atrium. A 'Collector's Mansion' has been setup there
When: 26 Sep to 5 Oct 2014
What: Watches with bling... bring the sunglasses if you can't take too much bright lights
Who: 

• The Lim Family out in force
• Sonia Sui... Taiwanese actress model who is in Singlish terms is also jin 'Sui' all bad puns intended of course ;) 

Why (it matters): because diamonds are a girl's best friend and so a watch with diamonds for your female partner could just be what the doctor ordered... the love doctor ;) 

gents do where blingy watches too but it's not for a lot of guys. where i have seen guys with blingy watches, they are generally attention grabbing coz of the bling, so if that's your thing more power to u :) if i heard right there are a range of sub-S$10k watches with a little bling all the way to a jaw dropping S$2million where i'm sure the whole watch is encased in sparkles! those are extremely far from your run of the mill timepieces and will definitely appeal to moneyed folks interesting in making a blinding statement :)

How: "All I do is win, win, win no matter what... got money on mind, I can never get enough and every time I step up in the building everybody hands go up! ... 'cause all I do is win, win, win... And if you goin' in, put your hands in the air, make 'em stay there!" (nod to DJ Khaled for these words)
how is this a how? well if you win and you get the money, that is how you buy the blingy watches, get it? and u gotta get your hands up for people to be in awe of your wrist ;)

Live pics from the opening event and some lovelies from the night follow (with more in my fb album HERE). Enjoy and get some shades on ;)

A pic from inside the 'collector's mansion'

Lim Family members with Sonia

Oh Raphael you really crack me up... 

flowers for me? let me give u a peck for that u sweet sweet man ;)
[hmm why do i feel all tobey maguire-ish in pleasantville...]

ok the flowers didn't come from me but from Jeremy... [ photos of that and loads more from the night... 

more Sonia, more models, more watches can be found on my facebook album here LINK ]

after that some models came out with lovely jewelled watches on their wrists... 

more model pics HERE but i liked how these 2 turned
out after some processing...

what u lookin at? [think madonna vogue for intonation]

now to some watches... first up we have some jewelled ladies' Omegas. these displays 
are great and i liked em the most. organic flowery woody and quite lovely 

check out the flowers and butterflies and watches at the end of the branches.
done up really well

next up... a nice lookin blancpain

corum had interesting offerings on display... an emerald bridge?

and there might be dragons...  which made me think of... Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, 

the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, 

Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons ;)

Cartier had different kinds of beasts on display.. a big cat for one
sorry no game of thrones reference for this :)

jewelled tourbillon

and i believe this skeletonised jewelled piece is one of theirs... love it with the ring combo too

next up some AP Royal Oaks with some bling!

some more than others :)

an a nice jewelled millenary on this happy model's wrist

a Piaget which did require me to pull out my sunglasses

and we end off with some cool bvlgaris.. an octo tourbillon

and 'the watch formerly known as daniel roth' (doesn't have the same ring to it as TAFKAP)

so that's it for my coverage for the night... i was happy seeing stars for awhile :) thanks to cortina and their organisers for the invite down and do go check it out for yourself if you're in town. bring your cheque book / luggages filled with cash / plastic just in case yuh ;) cheers, raph

Tudor-rific! (Warning:Modem Melting Post) 2014 Tudor Novelties Black Bay and Heritage Ranger and... DUCATI!

Thanks to Rolex/Tudor team for giving me access to their office and spending some time with me to share on the 2014 Tudor Novelties. Now these are in the shops right now and available for you to go and try them on to determine what you like best amongst the range. 

For now, I have 2 Tudor watches, the black bay LINK1 LINK2, and the heritage chrono LINK3 (check out comparison post with heritage chrono blue too LINK4) and i love em both so won't be adding any more for the time being but as stated earlier, they have been churning out some great pieces of late. As this post is really pic heavy(and lite on my ramblings), i will be sectioning it into 4 parts: 

I: Tudor office/showroom       II: Black bay blue and red
III: Heritage Ranger                IIII: Ducatis

Part I: Tudor office/showroom

The Tudor offices and 'showroom' at Tong Building is a great place for retailers to host Tudor cum retailer events. Nicely done up with their colors of black, silver/white and red all about the place 

and here we have a nice mockup of what a sales display might look like at your dealer shop carrying Tudor! For a second i thought I was sitting in one of the ADs... must have been why i slid my credit card across that glass table top :)

great interiors and wonderful new pics from 2014 have been blown up and are lining the wall, lighted from behind... hmm gives me an idea ;)

Two ducatis are here in case an emergency breaks out and they need me to jump on one and rescue damsels in distress ;) One a monstrous red beast

and a black shield all knight rider-ish. the hoff could be seen on one of these methinks talking to kitt junior ;)

some old skool Tudors can be found in display cases at the centre of the 'showroom'

nice setups for these old school Tudors

Subs are a fave of course... no blue snowflake? ;)

Part II: Black bay blue and red

and the watch i had been most interested to see in the metal to compare with my black bay red, the black bay blue of course

a very fine lookin piece... if i didn't have the red... maybe just maybe

it comes in 2 versions, the bracelet and the distressed leather and the fabric strap comes with them in the box

next to ol red... both are mighty fine lookin watches with lots of Tudor/Rolex DNA of course

i need both the bike and watch now! DOH!

i did try to make a run for it whilst i had it on my wrist but some guards on ducatis managed to corner me :( [kidding yuh]

a derek zoolander purchase perhaps to go with his blue steel look? 

some pool table shenanigans follow, as well, the table was there :)

rackin it up

Part III: Heritage Ranger

The Heritage Ranger is reminiscent of the old skool Tudor Rangers and old skool Rolex Explorers with the bold 12, 3, 6, 9 arabics... i m warming up more and more to them :)

in the metal, the one on the bund strap appealed to me the most...

but the other strap versions will have their fans of course. the beauty of it is if you tire of one you can always buy another strap and switch it out.

camo fabric strap

a very strong tool watch cum military look to it. end of day another smart release from Tudor. hats off to the team there.

and lastly and in noooo way the least to lovers of fine machines ;) not watches but Italian mechanised horses :) 

Part IIII: Ducatis

Tudor and Ducati did a good thing by customising this Diavel into a 'Diavel Carbon Ducati' that has a similar look to the Fast Shield watch that isn't featured in this post. Carbon fibre, matt black parts all over and lovely red accents throughout... makes me want to take my bike license already... yes sadly, i am without a bike license... may need to get one then a vespa, then a ducati :)

and that's it for this loooong post. hope you enjoyed it. I for one am looking forward to what they issue every year but i wonder if they can maintain their great run as it has been a helluva run so far. we'll see in 2015 which is creeping up on us pretty quick. signing off then. 

cheers, raph