Frederique Constant's collaboration with online resource the Naked Watchmaker stands out among the watch brand's other joint projects.
The Swiss watchmakers at Frederique Constant have teamed up with the Danish brand About Vintage to experiment with Scandinavian minimalism in the 1988 Moonphase. They've partnered with DailyWatch magazine to develop a “Pure” chronograph with a white dial and decorated dials with work by Filipino Graffiti artist Dex Fernandez.
Frederique Constant may have had different partners but the partnerships have always taken the same approach: borrowing elements from their partner's style in a project to create their own watch. Frederique Constant broke this mold in partnership with the Naked Watchmaker.
They literally broke it down into its component parts! Frederique Constant's watch was deconstructed before being modified. Deconstruction is one of the Naked Watchmaker's specialties as an educational resource.
Step by step, the authors record the process of taking the movement's components apart in order to show readers the mechanisms at work inside interesting calibers. Not everyone is willing to reveal their secrets but Frederique Constant dared to do it.
The company has prided itself on making manufacture movements since 2004, and the first perpetual calendar selected for this project appeared in 2016. A large production volume has enabled Frederique Constant to produce watches with this complication for EUR 7995, while pieces by their closest competitors cost at least EUR 25,000.
None other than caliber FC-775 was reworked, which was initially developed by the brand's R&D director Manuel Da Silva Matos together with the company's ex-technical director Pim Koeslag. The basic idea boils down to scrapping the dial to open up the movement.
The designers have enlarged the disk indications highlighted in a contrasting brown color and changed the shape of the hands so that the eye doesn't get lost in all the details. But the Naked Watchmaker X Frederique Constant Perpetual Calendar Manufacture Limited Edition is more than just a rework of a famous model.
The watch has even parted with one of its functions to serve the greater good of the educational purpose. The moon-phase display now simply reflects the movement of time, although both moons are now in open view. They've also gotten rid of the hand for indicating the leap year.
Now there's a dot aperture between January and March where February should be on the month indication at 12 o'clock. The leap year in the four-year cycle is indicated by the color of the dot: year 1 – white, year 2 – yellow, year 3 – black and year 4 (leap year) – red. The reworked FC-775 is housed in a steel case measuring 42 mm in diameter and 10.2 mm in height. The release is limited to 99 pieces.