Affordably luxurious Frédérique Constant and its sportier sister brand, Alpina, are among the latest watch manufacturers to offer a glimpse of their upcoming new collections debuting at Baselworld in March. Frédérique Constant is launching a version of its Worldtimer model with a new green color scheme, while Alpina is introducing a quartz chronograph to its Startimer Pilot series. Here’s the lowdown on both.
The Frédérique Constant Classic Worldtimer Manufacture, which debuted in a brown-and-rose-gold version last year, sports a new green-and-silver look in its 2018 incarnation. Like its predecessors, the watch has a three-part stainless steel case measuring 42 mm in diameter and a world-map dial swept over by hand-polished, luminous-treated hour and minute hands, and is powered by an in-house movement, Caliber FC-718. Composed of 139 parts, and visible through a sapphire caseback, it beats at a frequency of 28,800 vph, stores a power reserve of 42 hours, and features perlage and côtes de Genève finishing on its bridges and plates. The movement is notable for its world-time function, which is controlled entirely by the crown, with no additional push-buttons or correctors needed. The wearer can manually wind the watch by turning the crown upwards in its first position; set the date and city by turning it upward and downward, respectively, in its second position; and set the local time by turning it downward in its third, fully extracted position. The dial is surrounded by two disks, with a 24-hour day-night scale and a city indicator representing the 24 major world time zones. The dark green tint in the ocean areas of the world map, the date disk at 6 o’clock, and the world-time city disk is echoed by the dark green strap with white contrast stitching.
Alpina’s Startimer Pilot Quartz collection, which in its most recent version offered a GMT function, now adds the Startimer Pilot Chronograph Quartz, in five different references comprising three dial colors. Containing a Swiss-made quartz movement with a built-in stopwatch function, Caliber AL-371, the watches all have 42-mm steel cases and tricompax dials with small seconds at 3 o’clock, a 30-minute chronograph counter at 6 o’clock, and a day of the week display at 9 o’clock, along with a date window at 4 o’clock. White or blue luminous material (depending on the dial color) has been applied to the hour and minute hands and hour indices, and an engraved Alpina logo graces the solid, screwed-down casebacks. The models with a sunray navy blue dial are available with either a matching blue nylon strap or a stainless steel bracelet; the models with a cream-colored dial (with blue luminous highlights) come on a blue nylon strap or a steel bracelet; and one “all-black” edition has a black PVD coated case to match the black dial and black nylon strap. Prices for all the new watches are expected to be announced at Baselworld 2018.
