The importance of details
This elegant, subtle and pure new interpretation by Breguet is resolutely contemporary without compromising its aesthetic origins. The brand’s various decorative skills are indeed present throughout the watch. Its off-centred dial is adorned with a very fine Clous de Paris hobnail guilloché pattern hand-engraved on a rose engine by the in-house artisans. The outer dial features a circular barleycorn motif. The moon phase at 12 o’clock is designed to provide powerful realism. The gold moon is hand-hammered and the clouds surrounding it have been given a fine sandblasted treatment with a matt texture. Its sky is coated with a blue lacquer composed of spangles subtly revealing the stars depending on the angle from which the timepiece is viewed. The hours, minutes and seconds are indicated by the traditional blued steel open-tipped Breguet hands. The date and day are respectively placed at 2 and 10 o’clock. The windows feature a broad aperture for enhanced readability.
The movement
At the heart of its 39 mm white or rose case beats Calibre 502, which is one of Breguet’s thinnest movements at just 2.4 mm thick. Its design was conceived to provide a high level of performance despite its slenderness. Its barrel is open in order to enhance this slim aesthetic while guaranteeing constant energy and performance. Its oscillating weight is off-centred to provide maximum space for the main movement elements and is thus integrated within a minimum thickness. This rhodium-plated self-winding movement consists of 236 components. It is equipped with a silicon balance-spring as well as an escapement featuring an inverted straight-line pallet-lever with silicon horns. Silicon boasts multiple properties. In addition to being resistant to corrosion and wear, it is insensitive to the influence of magnetic fields and improves the precision of the timepiece. This movement that can be admired through the sapphire caseback highlights a skill dear to Breguet: decoration. While the white gold oscillating weight is hand-engraved on a rose engine with a circular barleycorn pattern, the other components are graced with chamfered finishes and a Côtes de Genève motif. Finally, the balance of the new Classique Calendar 7337 oscillates at a frequency of 3 Hz and has a 45-hour power reserve.
The Classique collection
Featuring a design representing a blend of purity and refinement, the Classique collection faithfully illustrates the strong aesthetic of the brand’s origins. Above and beyond his talent as a watchmaker and inventor, Abraham-Louis Breguet was also one of the first designers. When the company was founded in Paris in 1775, baroque style was all the rage. He invented and initiated the neoclassical style in watchmaking – an aesthetic vision that gave the dials an avant-garde look while making it easier to read the watch’s indications. He created open-tipped hands, the guilloché pattern and the off-centred dial, to name but a few of these novel stylistic features. The latter achievement appeared as of 1812 on pocket watches and established the brand’s DNA. Inspired by these creations, the first interpretation of the Classique 7337 wristwatch was introduced in 2009. The 2022 version is a contemporary and elegant incarnation of the original watch, while remaining faithful to the powerful signatures of the Classique line.
Available in 18K white or rose gold, this new timepiece is fitted with a strap in midnight blue for the white gold model and a mysterious brown for the rose gold version.