Chopard New L.U.C Flying T Twin And L.U.C Full Strike
The glamour-studded jewellery and watchmaking house showcases its full suite of capabilities with a selection that runs the gamut from playful ladies’ watches with dancing diamonds, to serious chiming complications primed for this year’s technical watchmaking awards.
Chopard’s beloved Happy Sport collection has thrilled generations of women with its ingenious two-piece sapphire dial that allows for free-sprung diamonds to slide freely in between, across the surface of the watch. This year, we are treated to two new iterations in ethical 18K rose gold. Bathed in a luxurious warm glow, the Happy Sport 33mm and Chopard Happy Sport Chrono are unabashedly fun and showy.
Paired with a rose gold bracelet and dial, the Happy Sport 33mm with automatic movement makes a statement on the wrist, with the dancing diamonds adding lively, effervescent sparkle. The Happy Sport Chrono (below), on the other hand, is the more serious looking of the two. Despite its testosterone charged complication, the 40mm automatic chronograph is decidedly feminine, framed by a polished gold case with soft curves and, interestingly, totalisers that spell out the counter indications in full cursive script.
Meantime, fans of Chopard’s upscale complications are truly pampered this year. The sports-inspired Alpine Eagle collection gets seriously up-luxed with a tourbillon model for 2022. Housed in 41mm Lucent steel (a proprietary Chopard steel alloy that is antiallergenic, more pristine and 50 per cent harder than regular steel), the Alpine Eagle Flying Tourbillon is the first model in the collection to feature the tourbillon complication, and to bear the Geneva Hallmark. Also COSC-certified, the watch features an in-house automatic Calibre L.U.C 96.24-L with flying tourbillon that brims with technical highlights, such as an ultra-thin 3.30mm profile, and a tourbillon held only by a lower bridge to give the complication the appearance of rotating freely with an unobstructed view.
And that’s not all. Chopard L.U.C, the brand’s high-end watchmaking division, has also introduced a trio of limited edition chiming complications to complete its bumper technical harvest. First up, the Strike One in 18K ethical rose gold that sounds out a chime at the top of every hour, which is limited to 25 pieces. Then, there is the Full Strike Tourbillon, a dual-complication powered by a new in-house, hand-wound movement, the Calibre L.U.C 08.02-L that is limited to 20 pieces. Last but not least, we have the Full Strike Sapphire, which is limited to just five pieces. As its name suggests, the watch is clad in a totally transparent sapphire case that grants one full access into the inner workings of the minute repeater movement.
