Is Montblanc's New Word Timer the Ultimate Travel Watch?
Sometime around the middle of the 2010s, watchmakers started taking the high-end features of haute horlogerie and passing them down to customers for whom they'd previously been out of reach.
To be sure, complications like perpetual calendars (that accurately display the date, day, month, and year and adjust for leap years) and world timers (that feature an internal bezel displaying 24 world cities, each representing a specific time zone) still commanded when-I-win-the-lottery sized prices, but at least they were now on nodding terms with reality.
Montblanc's Star Legacy Orbis Terrarum watch had its part to play in the trend. First released in 2014 and issued in different iterations since, the relatively affordable world timer took the aesthetics of classical watchmaking and put them into a stylish, contemporary wristwatch. Its multi-layered dial proved an ingenious—and legible!—solution to displaying two dozen time zones and a day/night disc.
Released in multiple versions, it originally retailed for about £14,000 in 18k red gold, but also for around £5,000 for a steel-on-steel version, which would have been a, um, steal then, and would certainly be a steal today.
Now Montblanc has issued a new version of that watch. The new-for-2022 Star Legacy Orbis Terrarum features a revamped black and grey dial with rose gold-coated continents and meridians, a warm new color scheme that Montblanc says was created for "today's sophisticated international citizens."
Though the design takes inspiration from dusty pocket watches from the end of the 19th and start of the 20th Centuries, and the two-tiered dial within the 43mm steel case packs in an awful lot of information, much of the democratization heralded by watches like Montblanc's Star Legacy Orbis Terrarum was down to how easy there were to set and to read—a real game-changer.
You navigate different time zones using the pusher at 8 o'clock. Once the designated location is displayed at the top of the watch, the hour and minute hands automatically synchronize with that city. As before, a gradated day/ night indicator slowly changes color, in this case from light grey (for daylight) to dark grey (for night), intuitively illustrating the movement of the Sun around the Earth. Meanwhile, the guilloché pattern on the lower disc represents the world's seas and oceans.
It's hard to think of another Swiss watchmaker that continues to offer (a) high-end complications like this at relatively affordable prices and (b) does so with such aesthetically pleasing, legible, and accessible designs.
Here, to use an appropriately well-traveled phrase, you really do get a lot of watch for your money.
From:Â Esquire UK
