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Since the revival of the Girard-Perregaux Laureato collection in 2016, the brand has gone all out in adding new references and materials. Nicolette Wong takes a look at this year’s new releases.

- Nicolette Wong

GIRARD-PERREGAUX IS A brand known for its technical innovations—its tourbillon with three bridges, for instance, is an iconic piece that was invented by founder Constant Girard in the latter half of the 19th century. Its Gyromatic HF movement from the 1960s was the first mechanical movement with a high frequency of 5Hz, and the brand’s Constant Escapement from 2013 was a technical marvel which, as the name suggests, delivers a continuous source of energy from the barrel to the mainspring.

In recent years, however, those impressive innovations had become a sort of a trap for the brand, whose focus on luxury timepieces with technical chops meant that it lacked accessible daily-wear pieces that would attract watch-collecting connoisseurs and neophytes alike. In an interview with Singapore Tatler, CEO Antonio Calce stated that “in the past, we had good ideas and creativity, but no real structure. There was no analysis in terms of pricing between the brand and its main competitors”. It was a problem that he needed to solve when he was appointed CEO in 2015. Impressively, Calce’s solution to the problem was introduced just the year after—in the form of a luxury sports watch called the Laureato.

The Laureato is a revival of the brand’s similarly named watch, originally launched in 1975, when brands were experimenting with different shapes and materials. Girard-Perregaux had turned to an Italian architect, who was inspired by the top-down view of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, which is also known as the Florence Cathedral, or Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome.